the foundation for supporting this lecture series, which has gone to the next level. and secondly, i never mentioned his title. he did not mention his title. -- we heard all about the final three words today. join me in thanking him. [applause] announcer: the book is called believe me: the evangelical road to donald trump. i want to begin what your book ends, because you say many of the leaders and their followers have traded their christian witness for a mess of political pottage and a few federal judges.

guest: i am really writing this book -- my primary audience is to evangelicals. historian, butn i am an evangelical myself. i am really thinking about what are the implications of the trump administration for the church, and what does american evangelicals -- what does it mean for evangelicals to latch themselves to a political party? and how will that affect their witness in the world as christians? i think that is the primary audience of the book. anyone who reads the book will realize -- i don't think it is a good idea that american evangelicals have been taking power politics like this to change the world. host: on the outside, what is your view of donald trump? an evangelicals christian, i see myself as part of the 19% or 20% who did not

support donald trump in the election. is i continue to think he not only bad for our country, but also bad as we just talked about for the church. host: but what about the supreme court? neil gorsuch is on the court, another conservative is likely to be announced tomorrow. is that good for evangelicals? guest: that is the question up for debate. that is something evangelicals will have to deal with and ask himself. yes, donald trump is delivering for a certain conservative type of american evangelical, those associated with the christian right. they have been operating with a political playbook for 30 or 40 years, which simply says you elect the right candidate, those candidates appoint the right supreme court justices, and you win the culture wars. you restore america to its christian values. in that sense, if that is your political playbook, it is

obviously a big win for evangelicals. my question is, is the trade-off worth it? is solving questions like abortion and religious liberty withligning yourself someone like donald trump, who does not exemplify many evangelical biblical values, at least the kind evangelicals like to cling to, is that a good idea? and is the trade-off worth it? i don't hear many evangelical leaders asking that question. instead, they are pursuing political gain and political power to adjust -- to justify or get their agenda published. host: let me share with our viewers some excerpts from the book. you write the following. evangelicals may have called -- kerry donald trump to the president the, but we should probably see his success among these voters as part of a last ditch attempt, a tickets charge

to win thet's charge culture wars. guest: the average trump folder was 57 years old. i think the average white evangelical voter may have been older. we don't have statistics on that. but i will say this, the average evangelical trump voter was schooled in the 1970's and 1980's, during the rise of the moral majority. to vote a certain way, to follow the playbook that i just mentioned in response to the previous question. ways, as i look at younger evangelicals, i teach at a school that has large numbers of evangelicals units. what i find is evangelicals in their 30's are thinking about their engagement with politics in a slightly different way. they are very pro-life on abortion, but they see life in a much broader way to deal with

immigration and the death penalty. they are concerned about the environment and so forth. historically, whenever you see the last gasp of a movement, it tends to be quite strong. it is a final rush. i live 30 miles north of gettysburg, the final battle on july 3 at gettysburg when the competitors the through everything in, charged the union, almost drove them from their line and were eventually pushed back. a good ways, that is analogy with what is happening, the last much -- push of the chris -- of the christian right. of the people that evangelicals, i don't think hate, that is too strong a word, is hillary clinton. she brings the baggage from her husband's presidency. she has all the wrong social positions for those who follow this political playbook. i think -- i have heard other

people say this. if there is any democratic candidate that could have lost to donald trump among evangelicals or generally, it would have been hillary clinton. the binary choice that many evangelicals saw led them to see hillary clinton as kind of -- there is no way we can have hillary. people tell me this all the time, who was i supposed to vote for? in some ways, i think whatever you think of hillary, she was a problematic candidate. she had the email problems, the email server problems and so forth. but you could make a compelling argument that some of her social proposals or social policy could be considered pro-life in some way, but that is not how evangelicals.see the pro-life issue .

her abilityinded by to address abortion, and religious liberty. there was -- hillary made it worse, and thrust evangelicals operating under this playbook into trump's hands. host: you point out a key moment for evangelicals and donald trump kim on may 18, and it will play out again tomorrow. why was the date significant? guest: that was the date in which donald trump released the list of federal justices, supreme court justices he would appoint. after thelso slightly death of antonin scalia. scalia died in february 2018. this totally changes the complexity of the gop primary because now -- and the election as a whole, because now the election will be about control

of the supreme court in a more immediate sense. when trump releases that list of judges, constructed by the federalist society and the that sendsundation, a clear message to those christian evangelicals who are following the political playbook, yes, he will deliver the supreme court. yes, these are pro-life justices. he is operating off of the same list now i think with the nomination we will hear about tomorrow night. host: the book is titled "believe me: the evangelical road to donald trump," and he also writes about our former president barack obama. he became the perfect foil for purveyors of politics. figure toan exotic many white conservative christians, and he represented nearly everything that made white evangelicals afraid. host: yes -- guest: yes.

there is a long history of evangelical fear in the american past. you can trace it back to the 17th and 18th century. ther the eight years of obama administration was the latest manifestation of that fear. barack obama, race had something to do with it. barack obama was obviously the first african-american president. but for many evangelicals as well, he had the wrong social policies, especially on a -- on abortion. when you think about when obama comes into office in 2008, he is defending the defense of marriage act. he is having his attorney general force the defense of marriage act. and you have the thin -- the famous interview with robin roberts, in which he says he believes it is ok, he believes same-sex marriage is ok. and of coarse towards -- and of

course toward the end of his career. for the lgbt community, this has been a long battle since the 1960's to get same-sex marriage the law of the land. but evangelicals see those eight years of happening very fast, and this causes fear and a threat to their sense of the christian identity of america. we would askst: who you voted for. did you vote in 2016? guest: i did vote. i did not vote for donald trump or hillary clinton. host: i want to ask you about the access hollywood video. it came to light on october 7. we know what the president said. i will use part of it. you know, i am automatically attracted to beautiful women. it is like a magnet. i don't even wait, and when you are a star, they let you do it. they let you do anything. and it goes on to expletives we

will not use on-air. how to they react to this, evangelicals? guest: any evangelical react to that in a negative way. host: but some did not say anything. guest: those who didn't say anything -- very few didn't they anything, but they said something like that is for rent this, i don't endorse that kind of behavior, whether it really happened or was locker room talk. but they click -- quickly moved on. of course i don't endorse that, but here is why we need to support trump. back to the playbook. as it developed in the 1970's and 1980's under the moral majority, connected to a president who had some kind of and respected american institutions, i think that political playbook is put to the test in a way it never has before. would it survive when the presidential candidate is not -- does not have the kind of character that evangelicals want?

answer is it did survive. even the access hollywood situation, or now with the stormy daniels affair, it is not going to sway evangelicals, many evangelicals, if trump delivers on the big moral issues. abortion and religious liberty. host: we have one phone line set aside for evangelicals. we would love to hear from you. our lives are divided between democrats, republicans, and independents. caller: good morning. i have a couple comments.i tend to think evangelicals is a misnomer. religious right are really fundamentalist. i belong to the evangelical lutheran church of america, which is a mainstream church, and my particular paris is very -- parish is very progressive. it is very different from the

right, what you would call the christian right. but they are really fundamentalists, not evangelicals. and they are very intolerant. here is something i have noticed on c-span over the last few weeks that this gentleman might be interested in. a number of callers have called in when talking about the immigration issue and they say, i am a christian but. and they go on to trash hispanics. i want to say to them, no. there are no buts in christianity. you either follow the teachings of jesus or you don't. host: thank you, joanna. guest: to address your first issue, evangelical is simply a word that is translated from the greek meaning "the good news." the evangelical lutheran church traces its history to protestant reformation. they have attached the word

a, in a way, the elc that the evangelicals who are supporting donald trump today, they are very different. they come out of the fundamentalist movement of the early 20th century. many evangelicals today were people who rejected some of the harsher sides of fundamentalism, and wanted to engage the culture a little bit more. jerry falwell senior and liberty university and many of trump's supporters did come out of a very conservative type of evangelicalism. some may call it fundamentalist, but it is a very different type of evangelicalism. word?damentalism a fair perhaps. often times, it is a word used by people who do not like somebody else. we need to be careful with that as well. host: this is from jodey.

a fear of a woman president scared of evangelicals are so scared they voted in any other context. they are getting sick in the head, if you ask me. another tweet. the 2016 election wasn't anybody but hillary or anybody but bush. and a certainly gender long history of patriarchy within american evangelicalism probably played some role in the reason why so many evangelicals voted against hillary. it is part of the equation, i think. there are also large numbers of conservative women who voted for donald trump as well. that certainly is a piece of the puzzle when it comes to hillary. i think the long-standing baggage of hillary's association with bill clinton, the lewinsky affair, going on "the today

show" and saying this is a white conspiracy,ght wing and her antiabortion -- her pro-choice views, which is tied into gender and women's rights, has something to do with it. guest: our guest is john fia. is currently the chair of the department of history at the fire college. mechanicsburgin and slovenia. morning.ood this.of all, let me say you cannot be a big it and call yourself -- ba bigot and call yourself a christian. thank you. guest: absolutely. you will not get any argument here. i think this is one of the strongest critiques of the way evangelicals have lined up behind trump. they are relatively silent, as

you mentioned. they are relatively silent after charlottesville last august. they turned their back on the more racist and even misogynistic comments trump makes. and when you are pursuing political power like that, and trying stay in the good graces, if you will, of power, it is going to limit the way you can speak prophetically to the culture, to the government, to the president. we have seen this throughout evangelicalism for a long time. even billy graham, so close to one of the last -- so close to nixon, he was one of the last to confront him. there is a great biography that suggests while everyone else thought nixon was guilty, billy graham was supporting him. but today's evangelicals don't learn that lesson and how that

damages their witness to the world. host: you wrote in the book he later regretted that. guest: he did. as he reflected back on his life, he said that was one of my greatest mistakes, cozying up to political power. host: donald trump was a winner, and he managed to convince american evangelicals he could score a culture war victory on their behalf. he would shelter them from mexican strangers threatening white evangelical america. he could protect them from muslims preparing to kill them and their families. he would defend them from political correctness propagated by the liberal media. he would deliver the supreme court. guest: evangelicals have been motivated by fear or a longtime. they always believed they have been the guardians of american culture. in some ways, they have been for much of its history. but things have changed, especially since world war ii, especially since the 1960's.

evangelicals are fearful about the way the country is changing, both demographically, culturally, religiously in some ways. when people are afraid, they turned to a strawman to protect them against all the things that are threatening their way of life and how they understand their community and their nation. in some ways, donald trump was the best strawman available. he was much more of a strong man, at least the 81% of evangelicals who voted for him, as opposed to the others, who were more traditional candidates like ted cruz or marco rubio or ben carson. for whatever reason, evangelicals believed it was trump who would protect them, maybe because of his bombastic personality, his willingness to blow it up, drain the swamp. he was there to protect them. and thus far, he has protected them from all of their fears by

doing his best to keep out mexican immigrants, by the travel ban, if you want to call it a muslim travel they are. he delivered everything that conservative evangelicals, the conservative evangelicals who voted for him, wanted. host: a word keeps coming up in your book, nostalgia. too many evangelicals view the past through the lens of nostalgia. in this sense, nostalgia is closely related to fear. in times of great social and cultural change, the nostalgic person will turn to a real or imagined past as an island of safety amid the raging storms of progress. guest: of course. i am a historian by training. history and the style jar are two very different ways of approaching the past. nostalgia tends to be a self-interested way of approaching the past. what i mean by that is you want

to go into a safe world of memories, something when things were good, when you felt it was good. very individualistic. what it does not take into consideration is there may have been a time when you thought life was good, or your parents and grandparents thought life was good, but it was not good for other people. and i think especially african-americans, people of color, women. rather than looking forward and christianpe, evangelicals have looked back to a golden age they have created. that world is no longer here. you could make a legitimate historical argument that it never existed in the first place. in 2011, i wrote a book in which i challenged that idea. what golden age to you want to go back to? the phrase "make america great again" is very much a nostalgic phrase. i tend to focus as a historian

on the word "again." when were we great? for me,an identify that i might be able to tell you what life was like for everybody during that time. host: we should point out it is in our video library, we asked donald trump that question in 2016. he did not answer that. good morning. caller: good morning. when i talk to my evangelical friends, particularly about the way donald trump tweets and attacks people and uses name-calling in all this kind of stuff, they simply overlook it because like you guys have been talking about this, they overlook it because they feel like they are fighting to get their country back. absolutely, and that is what i am trying to say. their understanding of the country has been lost.

notice how many times you hear christian right politicians and pastors talk about renewing, restoring, reclaiming. it is all about looking to the past. it goes back to the nostalgia we were talking about, and as a ofult, you set other kinds morality, stability, ethics, whatever it might be to accomplish -- to the side to a published those things. anti-trumpmp and the twitter feeds i look at, it gets back to this whole question of civility we have been debating for the last month or so. evangelicals can do better than diving into the colter war in this way -- the culture war. host: we welcome our radio audience and those walking -- watching on the bbc parliament channel. our guest is john fea.

back in 2013, a survey indicated that a quarter of those in our country consider themselves to be evangelical. does that sound about right? guest: that's right. and i can't remember whether that was white evangelicals or people of color, i can't remember. obviously, african-american evangelicals and many hispanic evangelicals did not support donald trump. we are talking -- when we talk about this 80% number, we are talking about white evangelicals who voted. the number could even be higher than 81%, though i am guessing it is probably lower. host: the president talking about some of these issues in 2017. here is more with the president. president trump: we love our families. we love our neighbors. we love our country. isryone here today brought together by the same shared and timeless values.

we cherish the sacred dignity of every human life. >> [applause] trump: we believe in strong families and communities. we honor the dignity of work. >> [applause] we defend ourp: constitution. we protect religious liberty. >> [applause] trump: we treasure our freedom, we are proud of our history, we support the rule of law and the incredible men and women of law enforcement. >> [applause] we celebratemp: our heroes, and we support every american who wears the uniform. >> [applause]

president trump: we respect our great american flag. >> [applause] trump:nt president trump: thank you. thank you. thank you. and we stand united behind the constant police and traditions that defined who we are as a nation and as a people. said thathington religion and morality are indispensable. happiness,ns, prosperity, and to its success. it is our faith and our values

that inspires us to give with charity, to act with courage, and to sacrifice for what we know is right. invokedican founders our creator four times in the declaration of independence. four times. the president back in 2017, and john fea is going through the checklist. guest: so much there. some good stuff, but also problematic things as far as i view it. this is him feeding the christian right the red meat that they want. talking about abortion, talking about religious liberty, bowing to make it appealing to the idea that somehow the founding documents created a christian nation. his reference to the declaration of independence at the end is right. the declaration of independence

alludes to god four times, but it is a vague god, not very specific. jefferson's god, certainly nothing about jesus christ for these kinds of things. but he is tapping into something that religion was important to the founding fathers. they sought religion as something that you're getting to the greater good of the republic, and i would make the argument that it doesn't matter what kind of religion it was. theeligion contributed to republic the statesmen were trying to create, they had use for it. if

-- there are a whole group of activists who peddle in the past. barton and david others. they do not hang around washington, d.c., circles. they show you how america was founded as a nation. one of the things they will tell you is that separation of church and state does not exist in the constitution anywhere. , it is hard to uphold that position and not go all the way. if church and state are separate, if there should be an establishment of religion in some way, how is that any different from sort of saying one religion should be privileged over another

religion? most of the hard-core christian right leaders believe of was founded as a christian nation be christianity should privileged. , theirard views on marriage. the list goes on and on. host: the president's presbytery and, does not attend church regularly. does that bother you? guest: i've never held a president to some kind of higher calling to be a spiritual leader in some ways. barack obama rarely went to church. all kinds of issues when a president shows up to a congregation. it kind of disrupts the life of the congregation that particular day. that's not the big thing about trump that bothers me.

i take donald trump for who he is. i think he is bad for the country. i think he disrespects american institutions and so forth. what i wrote this book for is for the evangelical christians, who i consider my tribe, my people, who have latched on to him in this way and made him a kind of savior, when christians really only have one savior, god and jesus christ. line,on the republic webster, massachusetts. caller: thank you for giving me the privilege to be here today. regarding the president, i think we are all human, we are all sinners. i think all christians can find forgiveness for him if he is willing to admit his faults. have anr -- if he did affair with a port star, i would ask him personally, what are you

have such au beautiful wife. anyhow, regardless. we've talked about history. how would you define modern day evangelicalism? what to evangelicals actually stand for? guest: sure, i think evangelicalism, there's a lot of debate among historians and theologians about what an evangelical is. i would say, drawing from a english historian named david bevington who studied english evangelicalism in britain, they believe four things. the centrality of the cross. they believe jesus died on the cross for one's sins. they believe in conversion, that you must accept jesus as your savior and have an encounter with him in which he forgives you of your sins. jimmy carter in the 1970's was

the first president to call himself a born-again christian. the importance of the bible, being the inspired word of god and authoritative book to live your life by, the teachings of jesus, the new testament and old testament. finally, a sense of activism. taking your faith and sharing it with others and engaging in social causes, engaging in the needs of the world. i think if you can sign off on those four things, and some of them are true of all kinds of christian religions. but when you put those four things together in a package, you have an american evangelical. i tend to define it in a theological way. be a racistrtainly and still be an evangelical, or you could be a conservative or a democrat, it doesn't really matter. today, the word has taken on

such a lyrical connotation, -- such political connotations, especially in the age of trump, it has become the gop. the republican party. if you are an evangelical and aren't a member of the republican party, people don't know what to make it. when ronald reagan defeated jimmy carter in 1980, you write that jerry falwell and his moral crusaders cheered. ironically, they had just defeated the first born again christian in the white house, thrown their support behind a formerly pro-choice california governor, ronald reagan, and from then forward, viewed the gop as their path forward. evangelicals rallied around jimmy carter in 1976. he started doing things that evangelicals felt uncomfortable with. the carter presidency didn't seem to be taking americans anywhere with the recession.

some of the foreign-policy problems. but the real issue was a supreme in which the united states government, green versus connolly, later became known as the bob jones case, and which federal government stopped funding christian academies, private colleges that discriminated on admissions based on race. those conservatives saw this as big government telling them how to run their faith-based institutions. jimmy carter took the side of the supreme court and wanted to desegregate these places. so, race was very much a factor in this. it is part of the reason evangelicals turned away from carter and toward reagan, despite his pro-choice roots and the fact that he was a hollywood movie star himself. he came and delivered, made the famous statement.

can't endorse you, but you can endorse me, or maybe vice versa. right boughttian it. host: from eau claire, wisconsin, john on the democrats line. are you with us? from tulsa, oklahoma. republican line. discussion. good very puzzling in that you say that trump is bad for the country, and as a christian, trump does the things that are good for the country relative to the choice. elections are about choice. hillary,the choice of so if trump is bad, hillary must have been good. andthe obama administration

hillary was a continuation, supposedly, of the obama administration. weaponize the irs against christians. now we are finding they weaponize the department of justice, the cia, the fbi, the deep state, and so you are coming on and saying the christians made a bad choice, by your statement, trump is bad for the country. host: will get a response. guest: i don't see any election as a binary choice. there are candidates on the ballot. there are usually more than two, and you have to vote your conscience. that might not be voting for someone in one of the two political parties. i understand that could be helping the other party win, if you don't vote for the party, you vote against a candidate you like or don't like, but that's

at the conclusion of the at the conclusion of themehost: candidates. hillary clinton did have some issues. i think she failed miserably at appealing to evangelicals. there was no way hillary clinton was going to carry the majority, or even close to the majority of them in 2016. that the election was so close, a popular vote she won by 3 million votes. --the past, she has made pro-choice, abortion needing to be reduced. she never addressed the

religious liberty issues. i think some of these issues, especially for christian colleges and other institutions are legitimate issues. there are some legitimate concerns about these kinds of things. hillary clinton did not seem to appeal to some of those concerns. host: the book is titled, believe me, and our guest is john fea. michael joins us from st. petersburg, florida, on our line for democrats. caller: good morning. the reason i'm calling is, i think the gentleman is right. donald trump is not good for this country. i think that when good men are quiet and don't say anything, evil prevails. it has struck this nation. and it is in trouble. it had better remember the history, what happened in germany with fiddler. the same thing is going on here. if you remember the comment from

mr. trump when he came back from korea, i want my people to sit up straight like they do in north korea. i'm an american, and i don't sit up straight for anybody. wille freedoms, and i fight for them until the day i die. guest: the beginning of the comment i agree with, that indeed, america is in trouble. trump is not good for the country. he seems to only be appealing to his particular base and not thinking of the issues of the greater good. almost like anyone who didn't vote for him doesn't seem to exist, no attempt at compromise. there's been a lot of comparisons between trump and a lot of historical figures. one of the things we historians like to say is that the past is a foreign country where they do things very differently, but you have to be careful when you make historical analogies, whether it be to hitler's, nixon, andrew

jackson. i obviously have heard the hitler's comparison. i just think you need to be careful when you make those analogies, so i won't comment further on that. tweaks,couple of hillary clinton was unacceptable to evangelicals because there preferred means of consuming news had labeled her as a satanic demon for 20 years. this, i would bet dollars to dimes that hillary clinton is more religious than donald trump. guest: christians are not supposed to hate. evangelicals will tell you in church that they are not supposed to hate. but if there is anyone that they hate, and in that sense, they fail in their faith, it is hillary clinton. she just brought so much baggage . , 25% of the got 20%

evangelical vote. i don't know what hillary cap, but it was much less. hillary was somebody who evangelicals would never, ever support in large numbers. is the202) 748-8003 number if you are a self-described evangelical. brad is on the line from lily, kentucky. caller: and like to thank the guest for writing the book. -- as a political party, not ,ecessarily trump or hillary either one good or bad, but the fact that they've cozied up to a --isive thing so closely we've cast our pearls before swine by doing so. i'm 25 and a christian, and i

take it vantage of -- hurts the cause of christ more. we got some feedback, but got the essence of your point. guest: i agree entirely. there's an old baptist saying, when you mix horse manure and ice cream, the horse manure stays the same, but the ice cream is ruined. the's the way i think about way the christian evangelical church is cozying up to power. again, that is the playbook. it is always about winning the culture wars through power. what is fascinating is there are all kinds of thoughtful evangelicals providing alternative ways for which evangelicals may be able to engage in public life, but the christian right ignores these things. many other attempts at thinking about evangelicals are rooted in

what a type of pluralism might look like. how can we live together with our deepest differences? the christian right seems to be -- using another metaphor, a dog chasing a bus. they've been chasing, trying to win back the culture, gain control, gain control. they haven't thought very deeply what they would do if they gain control. what does the christian right want? women put in prison for abortion? putting into prison abortion doctors? require a law that says you'll be fined if you don't say merry christmas? absurd things, but it is unclear what the christian right wants once they do, or if they do, when the culture wars. host: from the book, while there have been small victories, the christian right is not any closer to winning back the culture war than 30 years ago.

on the other hand, when it comes to indoctrinating american evangelicals into the most effective way of restoring a christian nation and winning the culture wars, the christian right playbook has been extremely successful. guest: i think jerry falwell senior, president of liberty university, and his son is now in the news, i think he may be one of the most underrated political figures of the post-world war ii world. whether you agree with him or not, he has managed to reach almost two generations of american evangelicals, teaching them how to engage in politics and public life to win the culture wars. in that sense, it has been successful in terms of mobilizing people. but most of their agendas, overturning roe v. wade, restoring america to a christian nation, they have not been successful.

we'll see what happens when trump makes his appointment and the first abortion case comes before what i assume will be a conservative supreme court. maybe they'll overturn roe v. wade, but that, i don't think, is going to end abortion. that just turns it to the states, and a large number of states will continue to make it legal. maybe some will make it illegal. is that really winning? made, is theoint i trade-off, to have donald trump in office. a man who does not represent any of the values evangelicals hold dear, to win the supreme court back to the point about pottage? evangelicals have to ask if the trade-off is worth it in the long run. host: jeffrey in auburn, new york. caller: i want to say, first of all, there's two shows on television i watch religiously. .ashington journal and jeopardy

i think there's an anti-intellectualism in the united states, and it sort of grows out of this christian fundamentalism. my dad was a catholic, and he never attended church except for weddings and funerals. my mom was a devout presbyterian. myself, after experimenting with catholicism and various denominations of comparative protestantism, i'm agnostic. agnostic of most religious fundamentalism. i studied comparative religion and philosophies, and i think christians, i've read a study that says only 10% to 12% of professing christians have read the bible cover to cover. compared and studied, and i

think i'm going to sit on the fence and not choose any denomination. and like my government to stay out of religion and respect the separation of church and state. commandmentsthe 10 on every courthouse steps and start using a knife or in i eyement -- an eye for an judgment like some of these fundamentalists believe, we will be like trump. thou shall not commit adultery, false witness? where's the forgiveness in that? i forgive trump, but i don't respect him because he continues and doesn't repent the sins of adultery and lying, deception and cheating and stealing. host: thanks for the call, thank you for including us with jeopardy. will get a response. it is interesting, the point he makes about government

staying out of religious life. there are many founding fathers, especially thomas jefferson and james madison, who thought this was a very good idea. there's an argument that could be made that when the founding fathers separated church and ante and did not have established religion, there's an argument to be made that religion actually blossomed when that happened, because now it became part of a kind of consumer culture. you had to appeal to people, had to have a compelling message to make people come to your church and join your denomination. the decades following the constitution into the early 19th , america could be described as a very evangelical nation. in second great awakening, which religion was at an all-time high. people were becoming christians,

rededicating their lives to religion and god, precisely because there was no established , and all of these denominations had to compete with each other. , andd wonders for religion in the early 19th century, you could've almost call this an evangelical nation. host: from missouri, independent line, john. caller: thank you. i'm wondering where you came up with the idea that the founding fathers would not have had use for religious people wanting to call out the government. guest: sure. what i actually said was that the founding fathers believed religion was very important. the clip we showed earlier was president trump quoting george washington, talking about the essential nature of theology. we have to remember, they were

not pastors or theologians, they were statesmen. believe religious people were useful to the republic and the sense that they understood how to sacrifice their own interest for the greater good of the republic. a republic requires virtue, they believe, but willingness to, at times, sacrifice your interest for the greater good. they believe religious people could contribute to that. a religion that was, say, the government is bad, the government is wrong, that would not necessarily have built up the republic, strengthened the republic. the founding fathers, many of whom were not christian, and so religion as a utilitarian purpose, probably wouldn't have felt the religion was good for the building up of the republic they were trying to create. host: explain why a tour of the

south shaped your thinking for this book? in june, 20 17, last summer, i took a one-week civil rights tour. reconciliation is one of our huge commitments at messiah. they send people on this tour. there, i talked to veterans of the civil rights movement and began to see an alternative way of thinking of politics and faith. a much more prophetic voice, .efined by hope, by humility and i learned a lot. i think many white evangelicals have to confront their past and , and darkep racism sides of their past, confront it directly. there's much they can learn about that from the civil rights movement. gun is on the phone,

republican line, from michigan. caller: an eye on? host: go ahead, don. caller: of the two people running, i didn't care for either of them. or in the primaries. but when hillary called me a that ible, which means was worthy of her scorn. how anybody could let that go, i don't know. like i said, she was a flawed candidate. i don't think it was necessarily a good thing she did that, and it hurt her candidacy. is a classicperson trump voter who couldn't tolerate the way hillary it bepected, whether rural people, people of faith, people in coal mining country. line,also on the republic from virginia, rick.

sense: i seem to get the from your guest that he thinks there's some sort of central control over all the churches in , that there's one that speaks for everybody, and that is absolutely not true. i've never attended a church that even spoke of politics within the church. everybody votes their own conscience. the church i went to is mostly democrats. people registered as democrats. virginia,in west where probably 90% of the people in the 70's were democrat. my family was republican, it was never an issue. of, giving a sense

that there a central control and we are following whatever this one certain person on tv says or completelyt is absurd and really demeans us and makes us seem like we are a bunch of blind followers. host: what would you say to rick? it allows me to say you are absolutely right, thank you. first of all, depending on what church you are part of, i'm assuming he is a protestant, which means there's no kind of hope of protestantism, evangelical is an. certainly there is in the catholic church. i wrote about evangelicals. they can be found in any -- in many protestant denominations. be founday they could in many respects in the catholic church is well. is no unifiedre

evangelical position on anything. in this election, though, we have come close to seeing a significant consensus of white evangelicals backing one political candidate. so i think that is worth at least noting. but you are absolutely right. there's some people who refuse to vote for trump, some who voted for hillary. and angela callista and is a very diverse group of people who i think our unified around certain theological convictions i talked about earlier in the show. i appreciate you giving me the opportunity to clarify that. at the conclusion of the book, you write, it is time to take a long, hard look at what we have become. that is something that could apply to the nation as a whole, certainly to the evangelical church.

you hear a lot of trump evangelical trump supporters, saying, we've secured the supreme court. that's going to be his greatest legacy, 20 or 30 years, maybe for a generation, the court will remain conservative, assuming he does appoint a conservative justice monday and gets a chance to appoint another one. no one's asking, what does the witness church and the witness of evangelicals, what is the gospel, what does the mission of the church in the world look like in a generation or two because of our relationship with this president to what degree does the evangelical church lose clarity to be able to speak to the culture in the way that they are going to want to in the future because they are always going to be associated with this president those are my concerns about what does this look like ?oving forward

what does it look like for denominations, for churches, for the evangelical witness of the world? host: the title of the book is announcer: c-span's washington journal, live the every day with his hand lizzie issues that impact you. this morning, white house politico reporter and politics at her with the washington times talk about the cost of safeguarding nuclear materials. journal,washington live beginning at 7:00 a.m. eastern this morning. join the discussion. today, a review of the recent supreme court case which ruled

states can require online retailers to collect sales tax even if they don't have a physical presence in the state. today's event is hosted by the international congressional caucus academy. right after that, the latino advocacy group takes part in a forum on civil rights. the organization is holding its annual conference in washington. >> president donald trump will announce his nominee for the supreme court, filling the vacancy left by retiring justice anthony kennedy. watch the announcement tonight c-span.orgpan and and listen on the free c-span radio app. whatxt, a discussion on

can be done to prevent crime and violence in el salvador. the problems of transnational bank activity, human rights abuses, and the migration of some dorians to the u.s.. dorians to the united states. ais is about an hour and half. >> good afternoon. the law program. we are delighted to welcome you thisnd to join you for discussion. in recent weeks, this country has been consumed