have i been saying it wrong the whole time? v i have a mental block.icha you know how has a few names and we tease him about it?hill that is my achilles heel. an ti can t save her last name. don t pop your achillesbut tendon whatever you do.s but secularization is happening across society. you heard it with megan rapinoe but now even christmas is being secularized. according to wisconsin right now, that is an organization, as city admini administrator it res not celebrates christmas. so department should refrain from using religiousfrom decoras are those wholly associated with christmas such as red ans sud gn colors. when decorating a public space touild make spaces and public buildings. she is the suggest neutral likei snowflakes, snow people or festive lighting, laura. this is quite a doozy. is she concerned about those who
is that there s a secularized appeal to him because he s so obviously not a pious man, not a believer. there s always a range event of convenience with the religious right. but the people who are at the truce believers, so they appear to be quite religious, quite fervent, and people you ve spoken to. yes, they are quite fervent, they are not all churchgoing. and in the story, i ended up attending a number of large churches with some with their own with religions. but you talk to other people to. i don t go to church, but they see this as a god lead moment. some of them say, we ve gone through this before. some of them see trump as divine, some of them see him as a tool of god. and see some of them see him, i think this is important, trumpism is bigger than trump. it s far beyond trump. they are leading the movement,
that s a lot. we have the author of that new york times essay about the religious right. his first time on the beat. joined by obama campaign veteran and political history expert, welcome to both of you. thank you. to be here. we ll talk it out. the piece is very interesting. people are reacting to it a lot. at least the way you wrote it, some of what you excavated. i posed some questions there. the floor is there to introduce yourself and answer. right. so thank you for having me on. the premise of the piece was basically that it is no secret to anyone who has been paying attention on religion and american culture in the past couple of decades that america is secularized. rapidly we are seeing fewer and fewer people to go church in precipitous declines in the last couple decades. but one thing that hasn t been
now it s just this political system that s so stuck in the overly secularized maybe i m in a grieving process, and many people have come up to me in grief and connect with me in that way, and it s it is a different kind of thinking. i peel feel like you exist in that space always. that is the realm in which you work. and it is a very difficult it s a different life, and it s a very real thing that many americans are feeling and experiencing in pain, which you discuss, but no one else really discusses. and it s kind of interesting. okay, so let s talk about that. but the truth of the matter is, a lot of people discuss it but they don t discuss it within political field because the political field isn t open. it talks about us like we re wacky, like we re crazy. you ve seen what s happened. so it s very difficult to penetrate that field. but the truth of that is, this is how the american people talk today. the political conversation is not the way the american people talk. th
secular world is tryingth to tae christ out of christmas. if you polls show that younger people, millennials, christmas is becoming a cultural holiday than a religious holiday. recent poll on the importance of religion, 51% of americans, 52% of christians saying it is important, others think it is only fairly important. how dono you avoid losing the reason for the christmas holiday? there is no doubt christmas is becoming more secularized. that cannot diminish the importance of the event today. 2,000 years ago the whole world was fixated on another government funding crisis, this time it was in rome. as c a result the emperor issued to some people back to their home towns to register for taxation. little did that emperor know that that would cause a young jewish couple he had never meant to travel to a dusty little