Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On The End Of White Christian America 20160910

In my garage april 30. I typed out a onepage letter that said dear friend, please read this book today and then buy enough copies to send to your delegates for the 1964 Republican National convention. I typed it on my typewriter. I headed mimeograph machine in the basement i went down to the basement and put the stencil on the round thing and ground out a hundred letters. One of those letters, which was read by a friend in california who called up and said, i read it and im going to a convention this weekend, united republicans of california. Put me off 5000 copies, so i loaded them up in my Station Wagon and took them to the airport and a sent them out and that weekend we had statewide distribution in california. That california primary was the first week in june and we sold over a halfmillion copies between the first of may and the first of june in california. Where did the title come from . Barry goldwater use the title and the minutes i heard it i knew that was it. Watch this and other programs that feature Phyllis Flatt Phyllis Schlafly at the tv. Org. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] good evening, folks. We are going to get started. If you have not gotten a copy of the book outside, please do so. Welcome to the open Society Foundation in new york city and its but its our pleasure to host you this evening for what promises to be eight terrific event for the bully titled the the end of White Christian america by our friend robert jones. On bill vandenberg. Is my honor to todays tonights event. I grew up the you why to state in the United States and group in the United Church of christ, so this hits home personally and professionally. I like to thank robert jones whom i am known for robbie for several known years now and transport for joining us tonight. Like to think the open Society Event team for putting the event together and in addition to the foundation its generally say cosponsored by the four Ford Foundation and the new world foundation. Thank you to all. Im a longtime fan of robert jones in his organization. Formally known as the Public Religion Research institute. It is a nonprofit, Nonpartisan Organization to conducting highquality Public Opinion research. Its Research Explores and illuminates americas changing cultural, religious and Political Landscape and its mission is to help journalists, scholars, pendants, thought leaders, clergy and the general public to better understand Public Policy issues and important cultural and religious dynamics that shape americans exciting and politics. Prri annual American Values survey is a mustread for anyone who wants to better understand how americans from across the spectrum interpret and develop their opinion on the debate today. This is work that helps us better understand the collocated nessie polarized and contested nation in which we live. We are a nation that contains amazing diversity, people, communities and possibilities to truly be exceptional and a transcend all that divides us or holds up a forward progress, but we often dont live up to our ideals and our deeds do not always follow our creed. So, the end of White Christian america could to some sound like a book that would be written by an author who sees demographic shifts in the us and apocalyptic framing. We know roberts work places it thoughtfully with a broader context that is acutely sensitive to race and Racial Justice and here at the open Society Foundation we have long been interested in the complex conundrum of advancing Racial Justice and inequality in the us. The time in which we live now is one of great possibility with the continued rise of diversity in every possible way in vibrant social movements that could lead to a multiracial and more just society. Yet, as we know it is also a time of great turbulence as evidenced by zero phobia and race baiting in the election with continued to scapegoating of muslims and immigrants for political gain and killings of unarmed black men and women to name a few challenges. We have worked in the past with robert jones and prri to ask for how white people see reason the us, what their thoughts are about structural inequality and whether they see growing diversity is a thing of beauty and asset or reflection of the decline in threat. Lets me now introduced tonights guests, Robert P Jones of the founding ceo of prri and a leading scholar and commentator on religion and politics. Hes the author of the the end of White Christian america, which we know very well this evening. Two other books and numerous peer review articles on religion and Public Policy. He writes a call in for the atlantic online on politics and culture and appears regularly on interfaith voices, the nations leading religion newsmagazine on public radio and is free for life meet featured on msnbc, cnn, npr, Washington Post and others and doctor jones is sirs as the cochair of the Steering Committee for the religion and politics section at the American Academy of religion it is a member of the Editorial Board for the journal of the American Academy of religion and for politics and religion. Robert upholds a phd of religion and a masters from southwestern baptist theological seminary. Are secondguessed is Sam Tanenhaus and the former editorinchief of the New York Times book review and the author of the death of conservativism and whittaker chambers, a biography which won the Los Angeles Times a book prize and was a finalist for the National Book award for nonfiction in a Pulitzer Prize for biography. Sam tanenhaus is working on a biography of William F Buckley junior and said recently on june 20, published a review of this seasons political books for the New York Times book review where he noted the end of White Christian america was quite possibly the most illuminating text for this election year. We will now hear Main Findings from the end of the end of White Christian america from its author who have a response from sam in a conversation between the two of them and around 5 45 p. M. We will have an open question and answer session facilitated by my friend simon greer who is in the audience and at 6 30 p. M. We will wrap the formal events and there will be a book signing outside this room. Without further do, thank you for joining us and robbie, sam, please take it away. [applause]. Thank you. Make sure i am on here. Thank you so much for being here. When many of you might be tuning into the Democratic National convention as we speak, but happy you are here instead joining us for this conversation. I want to say my own thank you to the cohost, particularly the open Society Foundation for hosting us tonight, Carnegie Corporation of new york, Ford Foundation and the new world foundation. Support the work that went into the book and also you will hear a bit later from simon greer, he is a prri board member and also helped us organize the event tonight so im indebted to him as well and then, of course, Sam Tanenhaus with whom i will speak in a who wrote this fantastic essay of why populism now, which is one of the burning questions of this election cycle. So, bill has given you an idea of what we will do this evening and i want to spend a few minutes giving you a bit of the taste of the data behind the book. I want to say that this is a data driven book, not a data dominated book, so for those of you whose eyes glaze over at statistics, it is a story that uses numbers to tell a story, so we will do it meant more of a storytelling as we are talking together, but i want to lay out some of the kind of empirical basis for the argument and story i tell in the book i will start with this picture. You have probably seen more clearly on the sign, but this picture may evoke some other kinds of imagery for some of you it looks remarkably like Norman Rockwells painting, which has this kind of in that photo the only differences you have the kind of matriarch leaning over with this enormous turkey, so i got this photo and he was sent to me in an email in 2012 days after president barack obama was reelected in 2012. Was the top of an email of the Christian Coalition of america and i was struck by it at the time because it came right on the heels in between the election and thanksgiving and it had this caption underneath it that said family at prayer, pennsylvania, 1942. That is the image here it is a blackandwhite photo. White family same grace before a meal and then it had this line of text further explaining kind of the transition from the photo to the message of the Christian Coalition of america that said we will soon be celebrating the 400th anniversary of the first thanksgiving and god has still not withheld his blessings upon this nation. Although, we now richly deserve such condemnation. We have a lot to give thanks for, but we also need to praise to our heavenly father and asked him to protect us from those enemies outside and within who want to see america destroyed. , so thats the message that comes attaches image right after the reelection of president barack obama in 2012 and at the time i was working on the book, but i immediately say that because it seemed to me the kind of artifact and a symbol of the visceral reaction to the reelection of barack obama in 2012 and so for the book is a bar is about like what is that about when we see these kinds of reactions to this kind of throwback imagery to a previous time and mythical golden era, what is behind that sense of nostalgia and loss and grief and so the book is called the end of White Christian america and i want to say to prevent confusion, what, i mean, by White Christian america is a metaphor for the whole cultural institutional that was built nonexclusively, but primarily by white protestant christians. That really did set the tone for National Conversation and really shaped a lot of american ideals, i mean, it would not be hard for me many of you may have not walked far without tripping over an institution that was started by White Christian american, white protestants, the ymca, the ywca, the boy scouts. It would not be hard to find these things and yet, these kinds of institutions and the world they were a part of has really passed from the american team, so thats what the book is about and you can see this in a number of demographic ways. I will focus a bit on the demographics to set up the conversation here. If i can show you once chart, it would be this one. Its really shows us real changes that happened just like in the last eight years, associated in this light gray, the period of Barack Obamas presidency. This is all White Christians together, protestants, catholics, nondenominational, orthodox want together comprised of the american population, so in 2004, 59 of the country and by 2008, when president barack obama was running for president two election cycles ago it was 54 . Today, the numbers 35 . 47 2014 and in the next year our latest data shows 45 , so during the last two election cycles, during president Barack Obama Presidency we have crossed this amazing threshold and moved from being a majority of White Christian country to a minority White Christian country in a short amount of time. This is, in fact, even if people dont know the stats that well i think many White Christians particularly White Conservative christians feel the shift in their bones and this is part of activity we see. To kind of put one more symbolic issue across this same time period and putting us here with support for gay marriage over the same time. If you just again go back to 2008, what you see is only four in 10 americans supported gave marriage when barack obama was running for president. The number two days 53 , so with that from a country where only about 10 four in 10 supported gay marriage where now a majority does. Major culturals shift on a pretty big issue in a short amount time. Part of the story the book is telling us about unpacking the reactions and the grief and the anxiety around the reactions to these kind of demographics and cultural change that we have seen in the last decade of our nations life. Just to kind of give you a little pie chart of the kind of country that we live in, this is 2014 data, 47 of the country White Christians and the other big piece of the story is this orange slice, the religiously unaffiliated in the country. Part of how we got here was to basic forces and one was the demographics, so immigration patterns, lower birth rates among whites and those things that affected the white population relative to the rest of the country, but the other piece that is more internal to the christian world was religious disaffiliation particularly among young people of the last few decades. If we go back a few decades to the 1990s, only less than one in 10 americans claim no religious affiliation whatsoever and today the number is nearly a quarter of americans claiming no refill religious affiliation at all and disproportionately affecting the young, so as you can see in this slice. This light is a bit of an archaeological dig through generational strata as one way of reading this chart. Luk 1820 18 to make 29 yearolds at the top only 29 of them identifies why 10 christian, but compare that to seniors at the bottom and two thirds of seniors identify as white and christian. Thats a huge shift in the generations alive today. That is part of the seismic changes we are serious see. These are the number of americans claiming no religious affiliation. You can see seniors only about one in 10 clean note the latest affiliation, but among the millennial generation more than a third claiming no religious affiliation. Again, big change in a short amount of time. Just to look a bit behind this a bit, what is this look like in a longer scope and its looking at percent of relation by race and by religious affiliation here with just look at protestants. If you look you will see up until 1993, we were about we were still the majority white and protestant country. Thats a blip in the middle that begins to slide after 1993 and thats the last year the country was white and protestant and basically the decline of protestants is really entirely due to white protestant decline, so this green area here are africanamerican protestants which have maintained their share of the population over time and you will see this orange tone is latino Asian Pacific island better protestants that are growing, so it really is white nonhispanic protestants that have intruded to the decline almost exclusively over this time period. Part of the mythology around kind of white protestant decline has been that the main line protestant denomination, the more liberal and episcopalians United Church of christ that those denominations have been declining and their decline started bit earlier, started in the 70s and 80s and 90s. That has been the major story of kind of white protestant decline and if you plot it you can see it right there. Whats new on the scene, though, is that the other kind of branch of the protestant family tree the white artist at family tree, white evangelicals has begun to decline over the last decade as well. We now have measurable decline among white evangelical protestants as well as white male protestants of that means the white evangelicals in the south can no longer point their fingers at their northeastern cousins and say you guys are declining for your liberal theology and we are holding the line and yet we are growing, but that is not what we see this point. We see decline on both sides. These are the external numbers at the National Level and you can also see it if you look inside of denomination, the major evangelical denominations themselves to the largest evangelical are Southern Baptist and mrs. A plot of growth rate among Southern Baptist from the 1950s to the present and you can see and growth mode until last decade and in the last decade it has slipped into negative growth rates losing members for nine straight years of demographic boss. What is listening to the electorate, we are in the middle of two National Parties having their conventions and they are headed towards a bit of break for august and then will rev up in earnest after labor labor day and be nothing but election, so what does this mean for the election cycle. One thing is that you can see the exact same pattern in the electric. This is data from the National Exit polls and you can see if you look back to 1992, general elections of White Christians made up nearly three quarters of the electric. 2012, downed to 57 and if you project that linear decline out it if these trends continue 2024 will be the first year we have a majority, on electorate that is majority nonWhite Christian in the electric, so interesting what happens is still in the midterm votes is you get a hold over effect every midterm election, mostly because White Christians tend to turn out at higher right rates in midterm elections than nonWhite Christians and nonaffiliated americans do as well. You see this stairstep effect where you get a hold over from the midterm basically where you were the last year and then you see it drop off with the next president ial election year. The same pattern, basically delayed a bit because of the higher turnout rate of White Christians in the electric. One of the way of looking at this is twice the question, how reliant has the two Political Parties then on White Christian voters overtime and what might that meanfor the coming election cycle. In this chart, basically this is the reliance among democratic presence of candidates on a White Christian voters overtime. In 1992, democratic presence of candidate bill clinton, 60 reliant on White Christian voters for his coalition, but if you look at where barack obama was in 2012, only 37 reliant on White Christian voters, so basically the Democratic Party has been following this declining ovulation overtime and with less and less reliance on White Christian voters. Check out the republican line. It looks pretty flat with about eight in 10 republican candidates in the 90s and today relying on White Christian voters for their coalition. One in just interesting thing i did for the last election was part of this chart where i look to back at these generational strata and i plotted obamas coalition and romneys coalition at the end of the generational strata and basically what it tells you if you look at the racial and religious composition of their coalitions that the Obama Coalition looked about like 30year old america in terms of its racial and religious upbringing. The romney coalition looked about like 70year old america in terms of grace and religious composition. This tells you like some of the challenges and why the Republican Party in its own kind of autopsy report at 2013 made this plea to be the appeal to broader voter base because essentially the remaining as reliant on this shrinking demographic and tricking voter pool as they have been in decades past. The one thing i will close within sam and i will have a conversation is this chart that i think will make a nice transition into they be talking about what is that mean for the contemporary scene. One of the more interesting survey questions that we asked at prri is this basic question about how do you evaluate the 1950s. Think back to that black and white photo at the beginning of the presentation and does that evoke a warm and fuzzy feeling or does it evoke negative and worrisome feelings and it turns out this country is evenly divided. This question about whether American Culture and way of life has changed for the better or whether its changed for the worse of the 1950s. Heres the basic breakdown. Allamericans here saying nearly half saying its changed for the better, but you can see a pattern emerging here, so if you look on the left its religiously unaffiliated africanamericans, democrats, latinos, catholics, africanamericans, protestants and hispanics overall saying American Culture and way of life has turned for the better since the 1950s. On the other side of the divide are really if you look into place is getting significantly different from americans it really is republicans, tea party and white evangelical protestants when the left, seven and 10 white evangelical protestants sane American Culture has changed for the worst since 1950s. Heres the other side of that so you can see it stacked up and i think in many ways this is one of the dividing lines in the election that we are facing today with to date different visions of america, two different evaluations and a kind of Cultural Center that helps sway in the 1950s and then where are we going today, so with that i will bring up sam and we will have a conversation. [applause]. Thats two a lot to admire about robbie jones, but that he can actually pull off wearing a suit on a day like today. Congratulations for making me look bad. First of all, i just have to say as someone who has written books and edited book review and write a lot that i had to say this is really in the most surreal of elections it makes sense that the book that would illuminate at best is centrally just about politics because this isnt an election that is just about politics or we would not be at the place we are just now. Is about the cultural protests. Its about america being divided against itself in a way that robbie has talked about, so what i want to do is pick up on a few things you said, robbie, and have you eliminate them a little bit. First of all, i will ask the audience to eight bit do a bit of a thought of experience that i came up with a number of years ago. If you remember a big figure in our politics or our culture was a glenn beck the member him . In 2009 and 2010, he was one of the most visible and vocal people in america. Use on the cover of Time Magazine and had his big fox show back in the days when fox seemed to be important and he was one of many extremely conservative critics of president obama whose reaction to his first election was not unlike what robbie described in that email you got from the Christian Coalition, so i like to say to people just imagine you are turning on the television at night and hearing glenn beck tell you that barack obama is an ailing of some kind, not really an american and he has hijacked this country and hes either a socialist or a fascist. You choose. I would say imagine this, if you are a white person born in 1940 and lets change it to 1942, because thats when your postcard is anywhere 12 years old for the brown decision when the ruling came. So, you have an active memory of unofficially segregated america. You were 17 years old when hawaii became the 50th state, so in your mind who cares whether hes born in kenya or someplace else . We know hes remember the one other candidate on the ticket in 2008, who is not from ads she called it the lower 48, sarah palin. She came from the new white state and he came from the new nonwhite state. At they both were in public politics at the same moment. You would have been 18 years old or actually you might have just turned in 19 when a revered american president accepted by almost everyonein either party now that is a hero and murder, john f. Kennedy said we are in a Twilight Struggle against the forces of evil, meaning the soviet union. So, some guy gets on television and it tells you the new black guy from hawaii is on the other side, it doesnt sound so strange to you and i think whats great about robbies book is he takes you inside that world. Its not to say this is the enemy. No, these are our fellow citizens and some may be here this evening. It would be great if they are. My question to you from that image you showed us, who are the enemies of the Christian Coalition . Who specifically do they mean . Do you know, do we know . Well, what is striking about it is this language of we heard it come out of left field a bit is this language of like chaos versus order. Trump saying i am the on order candidate and i have your voice. Chaos and order and i think that the enemies are the people who are terry down the kind of order , so im not sure i have like a name. That order includes, i think, for many a world where racial minorities new their place, where women knew their place, there was this order of hierarchal world where people sort of fit in certain places and i think its a breaking down of those kinds of social roles, expectations and limitations that i mean, i just watch the new norman lear documentary and it talked about on the family and archie bunker and the opening song, those were the days, right. You can hear her high note in your head right now, but when my net sticks out there is you knew who you were then. Girls were girls and men were men. Thats the line added that that really sticks out and i think it is this sense that man can marry men and women can marry women and they can be president. What is that mean for the order of this social world and i think they believe it means the end. Lets get to one of the really brilliant things robbie does in the book. It does in an understated way. Just as he said, dont worry you are not reading a book thats all numbers, but hes taking the numbers and telling you a story based on them. Did you have a chapter on Racial Attitudes in the south including among evangelicals . I have been doing a lot of digging around in this for a book that im writing, the biography of bill buckley who is actually a southerner. They know he came from this old family in connecticut, which was a new family from the south and half a year his family lived in South Carolina. Its about an hour away from columbia. Its in the south. Deep south. A lot of the attitudes he had and that Conservatives Associated with National Review were identical, where the old abuse of race are quite robbie does in his book and want to ask you about it without pushing the point too much, you make the readers see a parallel between those attitudes and todays attitudes often among conservatives and often among religious conservatives about samesex marriage. On the issue of race, i had a conversation and if you ask me which one will stay with you i think its begin to read power of racial divide that has stayed with me after writing this book. I think particularly a think about a question that has divided this question of belief between police and africanamericans in the country is the problem the killing of unarmed African Americans by police or is the problem that ambushing and murder of police in the street . Well, they are obviously both problems, but the question is i quizzed emphasis put i think its part of what breaks down, so we have to ask the question and trying to sort out why attitudes the question is do you think the killing of africanamerican men by polices our isolated incidents or do you think its part of a broader pattern of how police react in america. What we find is about eight in 10 africanamericans face part of the pattern and how police reacted america. Whites overall about half as likely to agree with that. Only about four in 10 whites overall say that they are part of a broader pattern, but when you look at white evangelicals it is only 29 of white evangelical protestants that say its part of a pattern. Two to one that say it is these are isolated incidences, so what this means is that its not just that we on the issues are disagreeing about what to do about her problems. In this case the cultural world of use are so divided that theres not even agreement about what the problem is and i think that is one of the real things that we reckon with as a country is why on one hand some people can only say Blue Lives Matter and other site only by clients matter and having a conversation about the two is difficult. Robbie, quickly because this question comes up a lot in normal conversation with normal people, what exactly is the difference between evangelical and protestant . Great question. In my own . Thats excellent he did that to you because thats actually me. No one else spills a glass [inaudible] what is the difference correct i talk about these two groups in the country has two branches of the kind of white protestant family tree and there are couple different ways to understand them. The mainline protestant world, typically was the mainline from the very idea of this kind of mainline railway and it was heavily concentrated in the northeast intended the examples are like the episcopalian, United Church of christ, Presbyterian Church usa and the older they tend to be historically more highly educated and concentrated in the northeast and more liberal politically, so these were the churches that were active in the Civil Rights Movement. For example, the Christian Center their flagship magazine was the first to publish Martin Luther kings letter from birmingham jail. On the other side of the divide our in fact to sort of my people where i come from from mississippi to chi grew up Southern Baptist in which a Southern Baptist seminary and these are kind of evangelicals who tend to be born again identified as bornagain. That is commonly when we think of an evangelical. Bornagain, typically more in the south and midwest and Political Science circles is the real divide whether someone self identifies as a bornagain or evangelical christian or not and that is the divide. We actually ask. Rockefellers were northern baptists skim a guess, but on the mainline side of the divide. So, it really is a cultural difference, not a difference of doctrine or denomination to make there is doctor no differences, much more salvation the Southern Baptist or evangelical world and there is among the mainline protestant world. Let me ask you a basic questions. How do you do this survey and how do you know they are accurate . Do you devise the questions . Do you have professional pollsters . How does i . Im a ceo at prri and we were founded in 2009. We are a nonpartisan independent Research Organization and we are fullservice polling organization, so we write our own questions. We supervise the surveys and we, you know, do our best to adhere to the top shelf standards of opinion polling and i think one thing that sets us, so note that we adhere to from the beginning is big and sure that we only do random probability samples that can be generalized to the white of ovulation. We typically do larger sample sizes and typical political poll would have like a thousand, new york time in the wall street journal would have like a thousand people in it at our last survey we did with the Brookings Institution had 2500. Are they telephone poles . A bit of each. We follow the Polling Industry and some of the challenges with fewer people having land lines, telephone polling which has traditionally has been done has been challenging. We are currently doing 60 cell phone and 40 landline in our telephone samples and thats necessary in order to get accurate samples of africanamerican, latinos and young people. Online polling . Only through random probability standpoint, so when we do an online poll we do it through the university of Chicago National Opinion Research center. Let me ask you a question that has come up repeatedly during the election and one of the few actually kind of attractive or appealing jokes donald trump made in his hunger games acceptance speech the other night was when he said that evangelicals love me and i probably dont deserve it. Why do they love him . What are they love about him . In many ways this is like the head of scratcher of the election, sort of why have these self identified value voters rallied around to donald trump and the latest polling we have shows eight in 10 head to head with Hillary Clinton had to head in the jellico christians will vote for donald trump. He ran even with ted cruz and mississippi and ted cruz entire election was based, starting with the announcement he made, you may or may not remember. If you think ted cruz has been around forever its because its true. He was the first one to declare neither party. Hes from Liberty University and made it explicitly advocate march 2015, explicit appeal to value image a local voters and donald trump equal or surpass 10 in state after state. Super tuesday was supposed to be ted cruzs firewall against donald trump and turned out to be like his complete downfall where trump swept all the Southern States and in the Southern States remember like states like South Carolina and mississippi in the gop primaries we are talking about seven in 10 gop primary voters are white evangelical protestants. Very homogeneous primaries and ted cruz should have done better by a lot of measures and he didnt. I wrote a piece a few weeks ago n a oped in the New York Times were argued based on data from the book and i should say Donald Trumps name appears nowhere in the book. The book was kind of wraps before trumps candidacy really took off. I think it sheds a lot applied of whats going on and what i argue in book is that not the book, but the oped is that trump has essentially converted the selfdescribed value voters into what im calling nostalgia voters. What became more important and theres a couple of keys to this is that i think people at the time did not pick up on the back in january in iowa, at the beginning of the primary process trunk in a speech at evangelical college where he made this explicit claim and he said if im elected i will restore power to the Christian Churches. Im the guy you need. You dont need anyone else and when im president we will be saying Merry Christmas in this country, no one is happy holidays. I think that was a very explicit message harking back to this world that i think many white given to local protestant peel has either completely slipped away or is just right at their fingertips about to be lost and i think that appeal, not an appeal you think about ted cruz was talking about either of these bathroom bills and showed up in indiana with this religious freedom lawsuit by mike pence. It wasnt trump, but ted cruz when mike pence was in trouble in indiana. Athena the day was seems to me is that cruz was kind of making an argument that he was going to carve out exemptions from the new reality. Trump was saying im going to turn back the clock. No more of this were not going to ask for exemptions, we are going to change the reality and i picked was that stronger appeal from trump that really did carry the day for him. Thats a brilliant pointed it comes right out of robbies book that even though trump is not in it you get it and this is what comes through. Is the relation, these two different forces, religion and politics and we know they go back to the founding of the country and debates about them still and how religious the country is supposed to be or not at what points to the relationship between religion and politics among evangelicals or conservatives, someone like jerry falwell, back in the 1960s he was extremely critical of Martin Luther king and the idea through the election i believe with jimmy carter was that if you are an evangelical you did not mess and politics at all and that was the simple tainted world. They were right about that one, but then it changes into this other thing. We did that happen and how did that happen . Jerry farwell sr. , the pivotal finger here, i mean, he gave in the 60s in response to a call for ministers to join the Civil Rights Movement that famous speech where he said we are about saving souls, not as civil rights. Thats what preachers should be preaching individual salvation from the pulpit, not about marching in the streets. But, he then shifted his view by the time he got into the Carter Administration and i think one of the catalyzing littleknown but catalyzing events was actually at Bob Jones University this prominent who had a rule against interracial dating and it was the Carter Administration that said you will lose your federal Tax Exemption if you dont change the policy because its discriminatory and that was actually quite a important rallying point for many evangelicals to get active in politics to read cyst against this federal interventionism into local politics, so it was this defensive often said if you will happily mean that brought them back into the 70s and 80s. I think what we see now, the different thing we see now is in the 80s and 90s the frame that was used was a moral majority, this is farwells language and it was a kernel of truth. If you thought about where was the country and gay rights, it was not that far from what he was preaching, one man, one woman, marriage if thats what mainstream america parttime. One new thing with this with where we are today is that white evangelicals i think are no longer under the illusion that the rest of the country agrees with them. That has really changed the posture, the calculus and i think its change the kind of level of anxiety and worry among that group that its not just the rest of the country that is going to hell, but its like we are like the lone outpost now. To clarify, is that your interpretation of data or are you asking specific pointed questions . What are some of the questions . One, again to think about white evangelicals who we have been talking about mostly that has experienced decline in their own membership, we asked white evangelical protestants questions about their own place and for example do you think that discrimination this socalled reverse discrimination , do you think this cremation against whites is as a big of discrimination against whites are minorities, do you agree or disagree and two thirds of white evangelical artist since a great. If you must do you think discrimination against christians is a bigger problem than discrimination as other groups in the country, eight in 10 agree with that statement. Its this real sense of being outliers in conflict with the rest of the culture in real terms i think is really driving what we see today. Do they identify or can you infer where they are feeling or seen the discrimination . I think a lot of it is around gay rights. With whole chapter on gay rights in the book and how this plays out, so i think the reason why ted cruz is so quick to go to indiana and to send on this religious exemption bill Lester Cicely because it is a way, i think, of trying to kind of when a few battles on a field where you have essentially lost. A way of carving out continue to places of i think its that sense of like our values are no longer shared by the society and thats a real place of conflict. It was damaging to mike pence when he waffled on the bill in indiana because they were going to get into the same trouble with walmart and i suppose thats where they are feeling the culture shifts. That leads me to another point. I went to rescue about is this though the pressure is not really coming from elected officials so much or certainly not law enforcement. Its really coming from the culture or to turn on the television, go to a movie, can i take my child to see a movie that will have violence or more specifically sex or maybe even interracial or gay or Something Like that. Its in the music, the books and if you go online its all over the place. The central sense of cultural endowment and how does that get translated . Seems to me something trump has been effective at is the Political Correctness argument. Its not so much that you are discriminated against is that you are not allowed to say what you really think or if you do someone will stomp on you. The New York Times Editorial Board is going to read a cool you if you dont go along with the crowd. Is it that kind of feeling them at one of the things i think has broken down and that i think has caused a great deal of anxiety i was in a conversation with on the radio with Bach Bob Vander plat was an activist in iowa with white evangelical activists and i have a lot of respect for him, but he kept evoking i think three different kinds of the conversation he said its just common sense that ; right . And he would go off and Say Something but in fact its only shared by white evangelical protestants. That a child should have a mother and a father in the home. Its just common sense that they should be the case. I think one of the real kind of a sense of vertigo that has happened and why the term Political Correctness has come at her such attack is because these assumptions cant just be brought forward without being challenged anymore and this whole sense if you think about the kind of security that it provides in a kind of social Living Social world where everyone shares the same set of assumptions and you can talk in the shorthanded dont be like if your guard up and it just cant say what you think and you know everyone agrees with you. Those kind of worlds are increasingly not available or they are getting smaller and you have to kind of check before you have that conversation, but i think and thats about power; right . Thats about a social social and cultural world that used to hold sway and has moved from the center to the periphery has to renegotiate now what counts as common sense in the country. You also say the kind of thing that david brooks has written about, who i think it is simply a interesting work is that also because of social media we go into these little cones or silos and we find the people who agree with us and norman a Coach Chamber and then you come embattled and that enclave, so yes, you can escape that broader conversation that you arent comfortable with or unwelcoming to you, but then you find a place where you are welcome. Has trump been good at somehow creating the feeling or sensation a perception that there are really more of us out there than the liberals might think or the democrats might think . Again, and we are not were nowhere in the moral majority, but i think what is happened is going back to the charge of the Republican Party particularly eight in 10 other coalition are White Christians. Thats a really homogeneous Political Coalition, so when you have that kind of homogeneity in your Political Coalition you can tailor a message quite narrowly that appeals pretty deeply to that world because its a lot of shared assumption, shared fears and shared worries about where americas going, for example. So, i think that is what has happened is that and i think the other thing that has been masterful is that trump has addressed a cultural moment and not a set of policies kind of thing and you try to pin him down on policy and its like nailing jello to a wall. Its tricky, but when he says we will make America Great again, people have a sense that they know what he means especially when he says explicit things like that means im going to restore power to the Christian Churches by which he doesnt really mean African American churches and latino im a catholic, multiethnic are key means white protestant churches athena today. Before we get to the questions, one more quick question. You mentioned young people, millennials. Millennials you say are less devout or at least they are not churchgoers, but talk a bit about how millennials are demographically and ethnically different from other population cultures. Clearly the most ethnically racial diverse cohort in the largest cohort. There are more millennials than any Population Group in the country including baby boomers. A huge tidal wave, sort of a crashing on the shore and when we look at those groups and ask questions about for example how important is it that you raise a child religious, millennials much less likely to say its important. Chemistry you trust institutions that millennials much met much less likely to say they trust these institutions, so its a different mind set. Its not to say millennials dont have spiritual interests, but it is to say the idea of institutional religion is something that they have had a real problem with growing up. Ethnically, its 43 or. 4 of millennials identify as nonwhite,. Much larger. We are going to questions now. Lets give sam and robbie a big round of applause. [applause]. My name is simon greer and i am on the board of prri. I will be happy to take questions. I will try to take two or three and then we will turn it over to robbie to answer them. Lets do one, two, three. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] thank you. Gentleman in the back. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] cement car you going to do one more their . Yes. [inaudible] looking at longer terms theres a lot of fear rampant in our culture feeling the sense of division. What do you see as a path forward for any entities that might wish to be either healers or Bridge Builders in such a polarizing society . Three very simple easy to answer questions. [laughter] its going to be great. The first question was about comparing bill clinton to Hillary Clinton in their outreach. We are going to get three more questions, so i can skip these first three. [laughter] i dont know if i can do a fine grain comparison, but the bigger question about whether about reaching White Christians, its important to remember there are white catholics, white nondenominational christians, mainline christians and white evangelical christians. If you are thinking pure tactics, white evangelicals have voted in the last four election cycles, eight in 10 for republican president of candidates. If you want to do a deep dive that would be the way to go, but mainline protestants have been leading republican, but not so strongly. Same is true for white catholics have been leaning republican, but not so strongly. I mean, theres a real opportunity in those two groups i think to sort of think about, you know, because those two groups are also in the midwest. Barack obama did better among white workingclass voters around basic issues like the auto bailout was kind of a big deal for White Christians in the south that were working class and think thats a good opportunity. Its also important to remember that there is this decline, but White Christian still make up 45 of the country and that is still nearly half and they still are in the majority in the electric. I like to add something. If you saw today in the upshot in the New York Times it said its not inconceivable that donald trump could build a majority with conservative white male votes and really the people youre talking about. To push the point, do you think the Clinton Campaign is under investing in outreach to this subset of White Christians that could be base voters . Yeah, that i dont think i have an opinion on. [laughter] next question was about business and Progressive Coalition around things like the religious freedom bill. Yes, so this thing in georgia like yes, he got absolutely may not have done what he did without the business influence, but what was also interesting about him was what he said about why he did it and in public what he basically said is he himself is an evangelical and he said its my own Christian Faith that tells me we dont need this kind of bill in georgia and got a lot of flack from that. I think its kind of an exceptional how does he im having trouble remembering exactly how he parsed it, but going back to separation separation of church and state. It wasnt that big of a back lash. They were boycotting cvs for months over Something Like this. They are now having multiethnic and gay couples on their commercials. That is a sign. Any tips about that. It will be in the next book. It is hard. What are the institutions that we have that might bridge the divide. I couldnt come up with any that would be that helpful. We have more churches than post offices in the u. S. They are everywhere. I looked at that and i said he was saying 11 00 a. M. On sunday morning is the most segregated hour in the country that is largely still true today. About eight in ten searches. Dot speemac churches i couldnt really come up with a lot of gains that we have that they had been lost over the last ten to 15 years. So thats not really a place where this is happening at significant levels. But here is a challenge before us. If i can put it this way. The challenges we have we were joking before if you were an alien from mars that you just watch the Republican Convention you would think they were different countries. There is some real truth to that i think. I think the challenge before us is how do we still tell a story of a change in america where he can no longer be assumed but it still has a place for those people who used to be in the center. It makes room for the great diversity that we have before us but at the same time it doesnt exclude the people who have been empowered but still have that place. For many they look at the country and they see it before them and they dont see themselves in it. I think that is part of the biggest problem Going Forward. I want to follow up builds on this. In the book you do in a very subtle and humane way of years say that there is a progressive american. The cultural battles have been won. This is an argument the battle is lost. It is over, it is finished. Cant you be more kind and generous. And you have a few thoughts about that. I evoke reconstruction and one of the biggest battles that president lincoln had to deal with was we have the vanquished pose. And lincoln stance was we have to find a way to build it back to one country. If we do all of these what the current analogs are that i do see there is some space here im not arguing the book the legal victories a rolled back rolled back the cultural victories but there is a way in which i think there might be a more openness less looking down the nose and less derision that i think might help. Those people who find themselves isolated now do this thing. There are some that try to find a place. On the same marriage debate was much more sympathetic to the religious liberty argument that you would expect. The ideas not everyone agrees with you. You shouldnt discriminate against the others. Let us live the way we want. But it doesnt mean it has to be a uniform standard. It was raised southern basque desk. Best. They have to be sorted out among americans it affects the Foreign Policy because as you said in the beginning it was founded on christian values. In many ways you have actually stated that. That is changing. How does that affect the way that we engage with the world. Until recently our view has been very expansionist and very much involved in the world as american exceptionalism. [indiscernible] so in your research did you find that millenials. In that more people are going to seminary. Did you see askew of progressives or conservatives. First question was about Foreign Policy and the impacts of all of this on americans stance in the world. The first thing to say is i would sharpen up the conception a little bit. It was founded as a nation that have freedom of religion right. But thats an easy thing to do when you have a de facto white protestant jury. When you are in a very cultural secure spot its a much easier thing when you look at congress and the president and the Supreme Court they are stacked with white protestants. Even though in principle one of the things i think is happening for the first time really been tested about what we really think about the First Amendment. It is something in nonestablishment. Its something we really want as a country. For the first time they still have to stand up for that even when they are no longer the cultural majority. I think that is one of the important moments that we are at in terms of how we understand the place of religion. Its also in the most recent survey we recorded that they no longer say its a christian nation. They are now saying it would be a slight majority saying the country is founded as a christian nation and other state the second option in the battery is it used to be a christian nation but it is no longer. Thats where we are now. I think it is a recognition of this. I think its a little bit complicated were working to go i do think when it was communism in russia and it was the big threat that is where we get under god in the pledge is when we were differentiating our self we are the christian nation there the communist nation and we can of put this in our pledge as a response to that. I dont know that that kind of thing is gonna drive the Foreign Policy Going Forward just because i think that sense is not there. The point robbie just made about the cold war in religion that was also a very fraught argument even at the height of the cold war. If you go back and look at the coverage of the little rock integration the argument of some of the most conservative republicans in congress we embarrass ourselves in front of the world and lose the ideological battle if were not letting small children enter a school intra school and how do we present our self as moral opposition to them. Do you know what the answer to that was. Thats not our problem. Who cares had to improve our domestic relations to please communist. In the term unit lateral or risen. In 1951. The idea that america and actually act alone thats what that turned into the american exceptionalism is also involved in a very particular kind of foreignpolicy that climaxed under George W Bush in the iraq war. That got taken off the table in many weights another thing i wanted to ask you about the healing question if from the rate it would be devils advocate that the liberals are to be great supporters of tolerance and diversity in change why cant they be more tolerant of people who differ from them by the ideologically way. Isnt that where they still have a case to make. The whole idea is whether were talking about principles or tolerance of everything. And thats never really been the argument. I think it was one of the more interesting figures i talked to him in the book. Hes right billy tried to accept their decentered place in the world he sought from the 1950s nine straight years of decline. Think about what does it mean to be a countercultural church. If you to be countercultural that depends on you always have a negative about what the culture is. Its kind of a weird circle. Im hoping one of the things he can do is think about what are the principles were to stand on. To be tolerant of everything. There are principles behind tolerance that places a limit on what we are to be tolerant of. Maybe we will actually get to those the discussions which i think will be a really healthy thing to do. I think its can have to get back to some more fundamental questions about what are we really for and what are we really against. Why would that be why is there not a single protestant on the Supreme Court . Until 2010 was the first year we lost our last protestant on the Supreme Court. If he gets could if he gets confirmed it would be only catholics and jews. This way im hoping youre not that good at this and youre actually wrong. I think the best thing to say is if the data in the book is rock all public polling in the country is wrong. There is some of that. One of the things we really tried to do were talking very large sample sizes. It involves 80,000 interviews per year. This is a very large unprecedented data set that were looking at and were doing all of the rigor that you can do now does that mean you are youre fully getting everything. It is nonresponse bias. People who call me never get to pick up the phone. The way that is compensated for at the end of the day he start out with a very perfectly balanced sample. No matter how many times youve contacted people the responses you get back are always a little skewed. The way that gets handled is that they are then re weighted to match the democratic characters is six of the country. If you are a white woman in your 70s and youre very easy to get on the phone. You might be hard to get off the phone once we get you. That person at the end of the day my it weighted. 8 of a response but if you are a 21yearold latino male youre very hard to get on the phone. We definitely had to get you on the cell phone and its hard to do. And once we get a completed interview you make it weighted twice. They make up for the other person. They are discriminated against. The sample is rebalanced. Thats what all credible polls do. Could you say another quick word about that and their progressivism and anything about seminaries. Clearly they are a different breed in terms of their religiosity so if you look at the white evangelical question that is the most conservative wayne if you look at seniors they constitute about three in ten seniors. And then we get the one third of them that are unaffiliated at all. That just changes the constant composition of the group. They rub shoulders with people of different races from the moment they are born they are about people that speak different languages and thats the big issue for them. It becomes a huge issue the one thing i can say about seminaries though is the places where they are actually growing and catherine is here from there. Its multiethnic seminary and there is this newer Multifaith Movement that is gaining traction. Its kind of the sign of the times. Is it true what the white millennial males that voted for romney over obama. One of the things we have seen is White Working Class males have been hit pretty hard by the recession so if they had trouble getting a job their Economic Situation is not that great. And they are under a lot of distress and we see that coming out as well they have just below the service it is a lie. Quick question. [indiscernible] my question is if i were to write a book. [indiscernible] from the First Amendment to the 14th amendment equal coverage under the law. I will summarize in the first one is the end of a lot of things. I should do the left behind series. The thing im thinking about next is what now. Because i think the reason why this is important in the way that it might be less important as it helps the white protestant culture what they did hold the center in america for most of our lives as a nation and thats why i think its fading from the scene. And i and the the book with a eulogy. I think that is what is really important. The next question is the question i certainly wont have the answer for it. The question we are struggling with is what now . If we no longer head this one Cultural Center Thing Holding this way in the center what then how do we talk about it to be an american. What is the kind of narrative that we are getting kind of weave out of the messy remains that are sitting before us. And how much of this is a problem of there not being those institutions. You know a washington think kit camp guy. He also edits a magazine. His argument is we are caught between individuals lump and the reliance on the huge central state. What you had suggested is that the in between institutions arent that strong anymore. He wants him to them to be but maybe they are not. I think its one of the problems. They arent helping us on sort ourselves with the silos and so i think thats the biggest challenge is trying to figure out what the points of intersection might be and we need institutions to do that. Conservatives are to have to think a little bit more about individual rights. Liberals well had to think more about character. Simply hopefully some of that will happen. In my home state it followed that pretty well. The lot is a little bit bizarre. It really went beyond what most of them did. And spelled out if you disagree with a single parent you can actually discriminate. It wasnt just about gay and lesbian couples it was really about a man, a woman as a Nuclear Family and anything outside of that felt under parts detection. I agree with you. The conversation we will have really will be about that. For the losers in particular. What is okay. What goes to the face of the law and what is in a kind of accommodation that seems respectful of a group that disagrees. They both agreed that pastor speaking from the pulpit arent going to be brought up on charges of hate speech. It is the First Amendment already protected right. I think many of them think thats not protected. One thing that they reinforce we are absolutely protecting those rights inside of those churches. That is a different landscape. Sketching that out will be a decade long process. Everybody received a book when you came in. There are more books in which if you can figure how to get a book to a friend. Rob will be outside signing books. In before we give them a round of applause obviously the scholarship is amazing. I think in this highly polarized time you dont disdain the people you are writing about