Nonfiction authors about their latest work. Congratulations on this book, it sounds like its out there now and its again i think youre making a statement about some things the we really need to think about. Again congratulations. Lets just try to situate here if you will i know we dont like labels and so forth i think its clear from the book the you do right this book as both evangelical christian. In a conservative. One of those two terms mean to you. Or how do you define those two terms in terms of your own stories and how you are using them in the book. First with conservatism. I think that is as having a libertarian mind and heart when it comes to federalism and the government being involved in peoples lives. Los. The reason i am a conservative though instead of a libertarian is because i also feel a lot of kinship with conservative social values. Their awful inline with evangelical values. Sometimes if i am really feeling frosty i might call it conservatory in. Even though i hold those values, im not a big fan of the government making this happen. Will get into the here. In terms of being an evangelical, i believe the bible is inerrant which i a prominent feature of evangelical hope. I believe in the holy spirit guiding you, i believe in most of the things you find in Southern Baptist denomination. And the fact that i was southern helps. I grew up Southern Baptist. In dallas texas and in virginia. You certainly have the evangelical and a great. If you will. You have the conservative background and youve written conservative outlets. You define yourself as a conservative. You make no bones about the. That is a position you are coming from. When youre riding to critique donald trump. You start the book with several stories but one really, a attention because i think you mentioned that is kind of the sort of window into how you felt about the way even jelly because were flocking to donald trump of the terms of the primaries and the general election as well. You tell me the story again and for those who are watching, tell the story about 1984 and you are in dallas at a protest with your parents. You know where im going with this. Tell us the story. Thats a great story. How it kind of came back again as the election was going on. My father sometime before i was born, he began riding apologetic norman geisler, who passed away recently. He decided the he wanted to spend his life pursuing the ability to teach apologetic and eventually hebrew and other language from the bible. So we often ring for moving along with from state to state for church opportunities. First he was a pastor than a youth pastor. And then he attended seminary. When were living in dallas, 1984, very famous, evangelical leader, senior. The more he was leading a protest the he brought me to. There are several had the had playboy egg is eanes the were to close the kids could get to them at 711. There were processing the. The memory was somewhere in my head. Its 2016 election. I had already known the jerry bold had endorsed trump. I was already seeing the movement in the polls towards trump but it was in june when there was a christian summit of leaders the trump spoke to. Someone tweeted a photo himself and had a thumbs up with tom. Behind them was Playboy Magazine with time on it. I say this in the book and i think it bears repeating here. It wasnt like this all of alyssas Playboy Magazine i know who trump is. Fathers legacy. He is the now the leader of Liberty University. He is an evangelical leader. He still in later. To go from protesting Playboy Magazine to giving a thumbs up in front of it was just days striking contrast the really sort of opened my eyes to the idea the something had infected evangelical movement. I want to come back to this. You sort of have a take on it or even a diagnosis on it. Yet this great chapter in the book the you called the new good news. Again, as i think of the term evangelical, the core root word is from the greek evangelists. The good news. The good news of the gospel, the good news of jesus christ, the salvation of souls or whatever it might be. So youre taking the idea, the good news and an eight not in a journalistic way. Some of those who dont know the language is the good news of the gospel or some of you may be go to your parents shelf, you might find a good news bible. The american bible society. You have a chapter here at the beginning. All of the pictures, the stencil pictures. So you talk about the new good news. I think i may be just answer the first question for you but what was the old goodness. The old goodness was a matter how youve lived or who youve been when youve done, and even in a sense of what you will do because he will make mistakes and you will have flaws. The your sins have been paid for by jesus christ and so you will get to spend eternity with god. Syriac what you are saying is evangelical elise in the book, embrace of trump, they are now preaching a new, you dont put good news. A new good news and you break it down. I just want to go through some of these. I want to get your or ask you to elaborate a little bit. Percival part of the new good news, not original to you and i seen it before but this id dia of theology. First of all, the real basis of the idea the god and jesus are vessels. What you mean by a vessel. God put in a particular time. The person theoretically and at times in the bible literally did not necessarily come across is the kind of person who you would expect them to use. This happens over and over again in the bible. They used as a vessel. Where i feel like it has been morphed is, well anybodys could sorta be be this vessel for gods will. There comes an issue when it is people deciding but what is this person done anything the they must be a vessel because it goes with their desires and the reason that is dangerous is because the makes it so anything the person does is an exhibition of the fact the they are a vessel. Thats a fast track to basically cult worship of a human. How do you hold somebody accountable that is doing gods will never mind the fact the youre the one who decided what gods will was. Donald trump you argued is a vessel. For many evangelicals. Again just so we sort of get the larger context here, we can debate a number but a large number say anyone percent voted for donald trump. I would tend to agree. Some of them did see trump as a divinely appointed person. I always wonder could you have the vessel theology where god is using particular person like donald trump. If you believe in the christian world view which we both do. Is using gods using trump as a vessel to maybe punish the church. [laughter] i checked a little bit about this in the book. The thing about trying to determine not just if someone is a vessel of gods will, but also why, but the problem with that is judas couldve been considered a vessel. It smelled like god didnt nobody was going to do and in fact jesus told him what he was going to do before it even happened. Had he not done the, and the wouldve also been the entire circumstance. It is not the case the a vessel is a value judgment. In terms of good or evil, it is about being in a particular position in a particular moment. Given the position the donald trump occupies, it would be hard for me to argue the god is not involved obviously he is. But im not going to try to determine his motives. Much los look past things trump does because i think the. The problem is not with the vessel per se, those the supported donald trump have kind of responded to this idea of gods work trumps being a vessel with certainty they know what the plan of gods. Theres no mystery there. Allowed times it really boils down to an easy answer. If you can only answer the question what about this. Well thats vessel will do what it does. We are at cspan2 right now so im sure a lot of people are probably thinking this sounds completely crazy to them. [laughter] before we get to this next part of the good new good news, indoor sense, how representative are these vessel theologians. Maybe some of the other things were going to talk about. Can we say all 81 percent are buying into this. Is it a significant number. Those who may be who are unfamiliar with this world of evangelicalism. Is this some kind of theocratic, and attempts to over the country. Present a few kind of crazies. He started the out. Spak. I feel very comfortable with the rationalizations the are used, four of them, the they cover the gamut. This is primarily how people look at it. I base it on living in this world like living in the evangelical world in the south, being is involved in politics as i am at traveling the country when i was making a film about trump in 2016 and then also statistics. The way people are answering things but whether or not among those four, joy think vessel is the most primary one. Not really, but i would say the it is a danger is vessel appears more often among the most vocal leadership evangelicalism which i think is a big problem and of itself. Related to this vessel, and the new good news, king cyrus argument. I think it was one of these, core evangelicals. The ones who come to the king score and flatter him. One of these guys was recently on the jim baker show. The one the hamza Television Show now. Pitching the king cyrus coin. For 45 you can buy a coin with king cyrus on it. Why king cyrus, what does this have to do with anything within terms the way evangelicals look at trump. Ive written about this too, they see him as a new king cyrus. They do, as a result of embassy. He was mentioned with a verse talk about how thankful he was when trump moving. I dont feel like ned yahoo was calling trump a new king cyrus, i think he was simply saying it is a big of a moment for us. As it was earlier. King cyrus allowed the as released to where the jewish people to rebuild their temple and go back into their homeland and more importantly, is doing this was something the had been emphasized. This was gods move. God had been clear through his prophets the this is what would happen. The comparison with trump is the since cyrus was a pagan, not a jew. He was doing gods will in line with prophecy and Everything Else, will certainly this could be true of donald trump. Thats what separates the vessel theology is from the cyrus theologies is the these guys say yes literal prophecy. Mono and a few others have referred to it as the isaiah 40 45th president because one of the verses about cyrus is in isaiah 45. It is interesting because i dont know if you know this but this is definitely a more french aspect of it. And yet, it is still embrace to a degree. It was talked in a book by the faith of Donald Donald j trump. It was written by david brody and scott lam. They talk about it not in a noncritical way. They presented as who knows, it could be. According to something is fine with it which doesnt surprise me. And there is a guy whose name i cant recall at the moment made a movie about it. The. The Liberty University filmmaker. The firemen the prophesy. So this vessel theology, its kind of out there. Animals seems friend. People define it without knowing theyre doing it. They will answer questions the they did prior to the election. God can use anyone. The issue with saying god can use anyone as an answer to a like trump, if youre not also saying thats true about hillary, you are kind of defining vessel theology even if you think the youre not doing it. The other two parts are sort of much more prevalent. One is the way evangelicals at least trump even, have compartmentalized, what he mean by the. These last two the we are talking about, not just the most common, most understandable and most rational. The still abused. Deparle is a visit good example of the. I compartmentalized perhaps if i am thinking which way the toilet paper roll goes in the bathroom. I dont necessarily need to bring religion into this issue. It is okay to departmentalized at the moment. What a lot of christians do and a lot of elections they will look at what they think is the most urgent issue between politics and religion. It is at the moment, the more urgent issue is the politics and whatever religious considerations prior, are still there. They will pick this more urgent thing because this really doesnt have to do with the big pitcher. I think Robert JeffriesFirst BaptistChurch Pastor showed a good example about the works. He wouldnt endorse narrow money in the primaries and he spent a lot of time saying the they had to do whatever they could to stop romney on spiritual grounds until he was a nominee and then suddenly was fine. Thats compartmentalization. What do you say to the person who says, the church is responsibility is one thing to preach the gospel and so forth but the governments job is to protect us and thats the compartmentalized and donald trump is protecting us, our borders, is a strawman who is going to fight the muslim threats, swinging doors, it doesnt matter, we know hes a center, we didnt hire pastor in chief. Had he responded the. You and jeffries, the first problem is he merges things sort of conveniently at whatever in the moment the he needs to. He was asked about the sermon on the mount. Would you rather have a candidate who represented the values on the sermon on the mount. He replied heck no. I run. Its shocking right, the he is saying if you see them like jesus, he said run. Then he morphed into what the United States does and how it deals with perhaps with other countries as a government. What he is doing is excusing trumps behavior despite no matter how far away it is from being christlike and saying the reason is because the government is in a person the we were talking about the man. From what i have seen of him so far, and seems is the what he is really saying is you going to have a government that is function somewhat a morally. Its an entity, not a person. You need a person who somehow represents the amorality. I would think the would be an odd thing coming from a pastor spell the the worst thing we could do is having a moral president. Where do you stand on people critiquing president trump. What is doing to the office, his tweets and so forth. And you have other people on capitol hill like ben sass and others who are sort of casting dispersions on trump for his character issues. Most of them lined up pretty closely to trump in terms of policy. How do you parcel the out. I dont think theres necessarily anything wrong with the idea or concept of the transactional relationship. With the president. I think the transaction would work, would be you have expectations of the person to fulfill your objectives and not make it difficult for you to support them. In return the gear support. Thats not what happened with trump though. The reason is not transactional even though he does do things the people would like. And something you agree with. Certainly. The issue he is not actually getting anything in return. He is not making it easy for anyone to support him in fact, because he is so prone to throwing people under the bus, if they speak ill of him or almost mafia like when he treats the friends of the family. It puts people in a position where they either become a critic and therefore an enemy, or they pretend everything he does is great. So a lot of people and wanting to keep this transactional relationship alive, everybody in the right, what is up happening is they are more concerned about getting their policies and objectives so the end of living a lot of times a lie. Knowing as many people as i do because ive been in this industry as long as i have, i hitting calling it an industry, privately they have angst about this. About how difficult he makes it forum. I am always suggesting to them because it doesnt have to be difficult. You can say the he shouldnt do this. This can be an example, Franklin Graham who is quite about trumps separating families, at the border because if he were to speak out strongly against the, he loses the larger issue. So he loses his prophetic voice in some ways. Some ways the church. Im not a psychologist but i want to get too deep into this. But i do want to say is frighteningly similar similar to how narcissists operate. Separating children at the border, Russell Moore who has been a critic of the trump, he did Say Something about the. Trump having guarding criticisms from the Baptist Convention head. He already called out russell. He has already said the he is dead to the Republican Movement and to evangelicals. Hes a bad guy. He jumps up to snipe at him just like the sun who wants a narcissists dads attention. Almost lost his job over the. The last issue in your new good news to me is most interesting one. The new good is is associated with a lesser of two evils. What you mean by the. To me, the broadest one. One that i would say ive even struggled with. Easy to struggle with. I have a lot of empathy for how difficult it can be. Lesser evil essentially means youve got two options and the only two options you got, one is bad one is worse and if you going to be rational about it, you choose bad over worse. 2016. Hillary clinton is prochoice. She will not protect religious liberty. She will raise taxes and all of the things you dont want as a christian or a conservative. Trump brings all of his baggage and problems but hell do things you like. This is bad but this is worse. What is your critique of the. I can see here and i can hear this all of the time, i served two evils, cant vote for hillary and then the big thing is if you vote for either, youre throwing your phone away. How do you answer the. Is very important the a lot of times i am talking to someone of some sort of faith because i will say the if there was no greater moral truth in our universe, if truth was just something we all agreed on, as opposed to something the really fuels life. But i believe it is. Pragmatically, sure. Why wouldnt you do the. The entire idea of faith is the you are answering to something higher than the. So once i establish the with a person, is there something higher to answer to. Its becomes a question of how much do you really trust god, if you think the god is limited to the twoparty system. That is a small god you are describing. He cant fulfill his will on earth unless you vote for a republican. I think its a dangerous thought. It contributes to keeping a system in place the takes accountability out of the system. I think it also is an easy way to bring in Something Like evangelicalism or any other faith in the news the as a way to get votes. Thats about the worst possible weight you could use faith. Rather than being captive and amanda goodbye, evangelical theology, big god who cares for his people. Who you trust. Who has your back. Is it fair to say the many evangelicals then have instead replace the kind of theology with a worldview kind of defined by american politics. They twoparty system or fear. Ive written a lot about the. Fear the when you strongman in some kind of person like trump to help us and save us while we have so much bigger than trump a god who cares. And this thing. You could have and i even say this in the book at one point, you could have gone into the voting booth and had a completely clean on just. Do not believe any of the accusations, redemptive figure, if you believe all of the, i may think youre ignorant but the information, i may want to discuss it with you. But i dont think of you poorly. You think you have made decision the you believe is in line with god. Thats not what im hearing though. I talked to people about it, especially in 2016, the line was i am holding my nose for these reasons. They actually have a lot of respect for my position at the time. Over the years what has become apparent to me is the they like this. They like how it is with the press. They like how he fights. They like up until yesterday, how he curses in his speech. They like the he is real. I get perfectly while politics is a blood sport and if you have felt like your side like getting bashed in the head while holding onto a higher set of values the the your opponent does not have to hold themselves to. Revenge seems free suite. But if you want a divine attack from christians, i cant think of a better one than putting you in a position to get revenge and not take it but they decided to take it. Lets talk briefly about evangelicals, the right to feel victimized. Is it a legitimate feeling the they have. You hear this also right. This kind of trump fight for us. We been victimized by the lyft, i get the sense in the book the your maybe not as much critical of the fact the yes they are being victimized. You believe the but the response to how one victimizes is where you. Help me parse the out. Its fine to believe this thing that happened to an individual in a certain situation was unfair and its even fine if you listed the entire right has been mistreated but i would argue there are things that the right culturally speaking have power over such as christianity which is pretty powerful, Certain Industries may have power just like the left. Just as horrible but my interest was there but because thats where my homeless. Host im intrigued how you describe people on the left. You dont seem like a person that worries too much so im not going to use that term but you wonder when to pull trump out of the equation you go back to being a conservative evangelical again and theres no point of connection you see a kind of you know return do lose those friends . Guest for a while because i would not change how i felt about certain issues and at times there were people who would come after me for it and that was happening but what i started discovering was i guess you could say i had this opportunity to talk to people who had always been my adversary. They had a reason to be nice to me and it was unaired of reason. They could use me narratively. I wouldnt completely but i did get people to be okay so to me it was so instructive that you put people in a position to not ian run of thousands of people arguing and actually finding common humanity. The bible says it just does. Lets go you are pretty open in the book about some places in the past where you have not taken the advisory were giving us right now. Guest by the way of persisting problem. Host this book reads like it confessional, i was a jerk and heres what ive learned. Without getting too deep into the weeds talk about this change of heart or your journey. Host there are two reasons i put it in the book. One is because i despise the idea of a moralist as you can see by having read the book. I believe we all fall short. Nobody is in a position to have the moral authority so to speak but we cant not talk about morality because no one is perfect so part of this just to connect and say i get it, we all make mistakes. The other part went straight to credibility. This is a tough topic that people are very sensitive about. Religion is the other subject you are supposed to talk to about at the dinner table so now its religion and politics. What i do and want is for evangelicals who read this book to think i was an outsider. I was there. I was with the tea partiers i was giving speeches i have every client in conservative politics of the Video Production company today i went on tv to talk about it. I am one of you, i really am and for the readers who were not as connected to that world i needed to give them an insight into what animates that mentality like for instance when i wrote about my first ever post was right after barack obama won the presidency and i had been so tired of being maligned and called a and Everything Else because people forget. This is a new trump era but i was so upset about it and then when i saw a bunch of act or is suddenly being willing to talk suddenly willing to be friends that kind of enrage me. I was just like where youve been for the last eight years . He were so busy calling me a and now you want to be friends . If theres going to be a conversation we are going to get to that point. There has to be some understanding of where people came from and why they got to this point. I dont make excuses for what the evangelical right or what the conservative right does on a lot of things these days. I dont make excuses for it but knowing how they got to that point is important if you ever expect to speak that to them or find common ground. Host your credentials in both worlds as a conservative and the points were those two worlds come together is strong and that gives you a much more powerful voice i think. Lets go back white evangelicals vote for trump. The common narrative is abortion its usually abortion plus one other thing depending on the election. Religious liberty or marriage you know. You make the case collaborated on a holding pattern. You make the case that none of those things motivate you. You are primarily motivated by evangelicals to vote for trump but rather it was selfinterest. I will supply an analogy of it. Im going to try an analogy to try to make sense of it. Imagine you are with your friends and you all are going to go out to dinner and one of the guys is their has an ax that hes not over and Everybody Knows that hes not over and that ax works at an restaurant and this guy says lets go to that restaurant and everybody is like come on, you want to go there to see her and hes like no, no its about the Seafood Platter. Its the Seafood Platter thats the reason i want to go. Everybody kind of knows. Politics in evangelical politics the girlfriend that he is pretending to not want to see his economic policies and lower taxes and lower regulations typical republicans that has more to do with an individuals life and the Seafood Platter and analogy is abortion. Boeings show the top concern for evangelicals and by the way for others as well but more relative because abortion was so often cited as the one issue that mattered but the truth is it fell below things like immigration, education Economic Issues regulations. The only thing it eke out were that treatment of minorities are lgbtq communities so basically the things that would be most relatable to a christian who is thinking about their christianity treating other people decently arguably immigration policy and abortion and religious liberty were at the bottom of their list and that includes when they write in their answer. Host my response to that i might not argue with your data but historically id have to go back and look and i dont know if you have. Id like to compare that poll with 2012, 2008 where as a historian of the christian right this is just anecdotally, it does seem like moral issues were and are the most important and we could debate that. Guest i will say one of the reasons i think itd be easier to believe in some of the previous elections is because they were voting for president during president ial years, they were voting for a republican president to more easily allied with what you would picture an evangelical to support. When trump comes into the picture it changes the calculus. Host how do we, how do evangelicals kind of move . What is their next step and what is the state of evangelicalism as to in terms of you hear cries of evangelicals abandoning the term and abandoning the movement. It has been so coopted by politics gop politics usually, right . That it has no power to shape the culture anymore. Even the churches are we getting. The gospel is being damaged. Where do you come down on that . Is still used the term evangelical to describe yourself what is the state of this movement that you have adhered to and i identify as an evangelical myself that i is here too you are the one being interviewed. Guest first, why do i keep the name evangelical. I love the idea of evangelizing. I think its important and it should sound distinct. When youre talking about evangelizing and you can use that word in another context, it shouldnt have a negative comment taisha but i think it does. That bothers me to the point that id really like to rescue it. Id really rather not throw it away. Id rather continue to be rehab, okay . I think part of that is happening is going to be not a separation of religion and politics necessarily. I think it would a kind of strange to think that god isnt going to have anything to do with your decision in the voting booth but you need a more individual decision last imposed by people specifically empowered by the church and this one is something that gives me a lot of i think we have a megachurch problem in this country. There were 12 disciples. Ive always thought that was a good number. Many churches have said that their internal statistics show people who are happiest to go to church have a bible study. They have a small group that they go to a life group, whatever you want to call it where people are listening and living with each other and holding each other accountable. Thats coming from somebody who literally attends a satellite church. Ive been wrestling with that for a while. The church could be okay if there was more emphasis put on a smaller groups. Irish think when i drive past a megachurch on the highway or something and again i hope people dont read too much into what im about to say but i think about jesus in the gospel talking about the darrell wrote. You want unbelievers to come but somebody said theres a disconnect there. Guest i get it, i do get it where its like why do a lot of churches especially the bigger churches and again i go to church like that. I like the music but i think you may agree with what im about to say because sometimes its like a giant therapy session. They are very connected to today which is great. You want people to feel. Host but thats temporary. Guest i grew up in a home and i have a lot of understanding about theology and i have a lot of understanding about it because of something he emphasized in put on my heart that has helped me and i feel like churches these days need to think about using that. It was put in the bible for a reason. They have these passages of making things clear so smaller more personal. Honestly federalism of the church. Host do you think that if we do move to a slower more committed group of people that may help solve some of our political evangelical political problems . I think theres another aspect of it which is it needs to hold leaders accountable. Franklin graham has disappointed me but Robert Jeffries and others they are not discussing politics are more religious angle. They are discussing religion and given the size of their influence and we both work in a world where i am people im never going to meet read things that ive written and whether or not these guys except that thats a big responsibility. If you are careful with your words somebody can take it, they have much more responsibility than they are acting like they have. Host theres no Central Authority and sometimes i can be a bad thing but there is no one. Evangelicalism is not a denomination. There are no bishops. I thought about it and it aint the word evangelical. Where do you send a letter, right . How do you do that . Guest its difficult because i went to a church a presbyterian and that was their denomination. Then they wanted to become nondenominational but they disagreed with the way the Presbyterian Church was doing things but they still consider themselves presbyterian. Host thats the problem with protestantism put bible in hand to the people. Guest the smaller the better. Host we have a couple minutes left in there so much more in the book id love to talk about credit love this idea oral welfare and you have great thoughts about the allred that has been coopted by it many ways by trump. In the last two minutes here and im sure youre getting this question a lot, 20s 20 evangelicals. I know youre not a profit back. What is your take . First of all i think its pretty obvious they are going to rally around jump again. Personally theres one thing im adjusted in seeing which is they have consistently been putting out 26 of the electorate in the election but interestingly the number people will act in the fight as evangelical have been going down at the same time which i extrapolate to mean they are doubling down on their enthusiasm with less people. Dwindling down on enthusiasm when it comes to the right is mostly injections of fear. Fear, fear, fear. We have the immigration issue in the serious issue. We have a lot of angles for fear part of what is going to dictate in my opinion whats going to openly happen is who the candidate is. This is Kamala Harris or Bernie Sanders . It i think it will be the biggest evangelical turnout that youve ever seen as going to have much more uniformity even than 81 . And with biden i think the evangelical vote will overwhelmingly go with trump. But asked the question simply will they vote for him . Absolutely, absolutely. Host ben howe author of the immoral majority thanks for talking with us and thanks for taking the time. Guest absolutely, thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to the william g. Mcgowan theater i am the archivist of the United States and a pleasure to have you with us. Here in the theater