Hey everybody. This is a free preview of the Weekender Edition Muckric Podcast. We've got Rev. Angela Danker today, and she's fantastic, and it is a episode that you're going to want to hear. We get really in depth about a lot of stuff, so go over to patreon.com/muckricpodcast. Also, that way you're going to be hanging out with Nick and me next Monday after the 1st night of the Republic National Convention, as well as, I don't know, if there's a need for any emergency podcast. But anyway, let's get to it, patreon.com/muckricpodcast. Hey everybody, welcome to the Weekender Edition of Muckric Podcast, I'm Jared YatesXton. It has been a long, long week, it's been a long, long couple of weeks. There is so much going on, as everybody knows, Nick Houseman is out for vacation, that's the way vacation always works, the world explodes, we've got to figure things out. Luckily today, I am joined by Rev. Angela Danker, who is a pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. She is the author of Red State Christians and the forthcoming disciples of white Jesus, the radicalization of American boyhood. Angela, it is so good to have you on the show, it's so good to see you. Unfortunately, as is always the case, my favorite people, I have to talk about the absolute worst things worth. Exactly. Now, at least, I mean, maybe by, I feel like my word lately is cathartic. It will be cathartic. You know, in days like these, catharsis is one of the, like, you know, it's not a small thing by any stretch of the imagination, but it's important. A reminder to anybody listening to this episode, if you want to get the full Weekender episode, if you want to support the show, go to patreon.com/muckricpodcast. Also next week, unfortunately, the Republican National Convention begins for our patrons. We will be taping our live Tuesday episode next Monday night immediately following the cessation of the first night of the Republican Convention. I assume it is going to be so much fun. I'm looking forward to subjecting myself to stochastic terrorism and awful, awful stuff. Angela, I have to assume you're looking forward to it as well. I mean, I got to think, you know, at least, at least maybe in Milwaukee, there's going to be some good beer for people. That is the one good thing. It's like Milwaukee can be a really wonderful city if you're looking for it. Well, let's go ahead and jump into this full, full, full way. We have so much going on in the right-wing evangelical world and space, which you and I, I think, both find equally fascinating and important. I was very excited to get into a lot of this stuff. We start, unfortunately, and I really have no pleasure in this. We have to start with Missouri Senator Josh Hawley and, and man, what a, what a lovely human being that we get to spend some time with. Hawley went to the National Conservative Conference in Washington, D.C. last week. This is one of his favorite places to go, spend time. This, these are his people. He has been there every time that they've ever offered him and every time he goes, he makes news and illusinates more and more about how he feels about the world. We're going to listen to a brief clip and then start talking a little bit about what's going on. But this was Josh Hawley at the National Conservative Conference. Some will say now that I am calling America a Christian nation, and so I am. Some will say that I am advocating Christian nationalism, and so I do. Cool. Man, don't get tired of hearing that, guys, speak. So let's go ahead and begin. There's a lot to unpack here, not just with what Josh Hawley had to say, and we'll get into a little bit more of that in depth here in a few minutes. But can we talk at the very, very beginning about a term that I think a lot of people have heard that maybe they're not familiar with it, what it means, what is ramifications are? Can you start us off talking a little bit about what exactly is Christian nationalism? Yeah, that's the question of our day, isn't it? Amen. So I will say there's so many great scholars studying Christian nationalism, people coming at it from a sociological perspective, a historical perspective. I personally come at it from a theological perspective as a theologian and an ordained pastor and as a journalist. So what I see Christian nationalism fundamentally is a version of what's long been called the theology of glory. And it's this sense that if you follow the tenets of a certain religion, then your religion is going to be in power in a country and you are going to have wealth and influence and you are really going to be like God. And so for me, I think it's important for people to understand that Christianity, that Christian nationalism at its root is an idolatry. It really idolizes something other than the Jesus of the Bible. And when you hear Josh Holly speak, you don't hear him talking about biblical tenants. You don't hear him talking about the social ethics that Jesus talked about. Instead you really hear him talking about power and control. And that is really the heart of Christian nationalism. It's theocracy, it's government and religion tied extremely close together. And what I always want people to note too is that it was that same joining of religious and political power that crucified Jesus. So we really for me, it's important for people to make that distinction between Christian nationalism and the gospel of Jesus and a religion that is supposed to be focused on love and sacrifice versus an ideology that took us on power and wealth. I think that is a really succinct and powerful way of putting it because one of the things that happens in all of this, and I'm sure it causes you a ton of frustration. It pisses me off to no end, which is we have a tendency in America to not really understand what we're talking about, the context of things. It was really amazing to me as an ex-evangelical who grew up in the environment of what is now coming to fruition. The stuff that I grew up with is now everywhere. People have always been like, how could it be that white evangelicals support Donald Trump? Obviously, and it's like, well, you don't understand exactly what has happened with religion. On one hand, if you or I were to sit down and talk about religion, we would be talking about so many different things. We could be talking about what is the actual theology? We could talk about what are we talking about when we say Christianity? In one way, you could be talking about the history of how we interact with one another, how we see the idea of an immortal soul, how we navigate all of these different facets of life. In doing so, what you're actually doing is you are interacting with dogma where it is and deciding how you feel about life because of that dogma. What has actually happened, and I don't throw this word around lightly, what Holly and other Christian nationalists are doing here is they are guilty of being her heretics. We have literally taken the philosophy of Christianity, the theology of Christianity, and much like we've seen with churches, with groups, with nations, whatever you want to say, they can take an ideology and they can twist it and use it for their own specific purposes. I assume there are plenty of Christian nationalists who consider themselves actually Christian. They view the world through a Christian lens and just so happens that there are politics and cultural ideologies come in intertangle. There are plenty of others who may not believe even in Christian theology in general, but they understand that it's useful in creating a movement for their own power and enrichment and also it's incredibly useful to validate oppression. One of the things, unfortunately, the Holly gets into, and I want to point out, I think he is absolutely disgusting, he's intelligent, he knows what he is quote-unquote talking about through the lens. In this speech, and we'll get into a little bit more of it in a second, he says that the basis basically of Western democracy is Augustine of Hippo, which when you start actually going through Augustine, one of the things that you're talking about is not just how is a society built, but you're actually talking about how can power be used. One of the things that Augustine, I didn't understand this until I wrote Midnight Kingdom, but one of the ideas is you have God on your side, you have the one true word on your side, which means that you have the right to do whatever is necessary in order to make the world to your vision and to take out anybody who might threaten you. What's hidden underneath a lot of the rhetoric and a lot of the things that Holly and other Christian nationalists will say is these are the reasons we should be able to do what it is that we want, which would create a theocracy that isn't necessarily religious, it just uses religion as the ideology to push what they want to do. Yeah, I mean, I think when you talk about the American ideas being so divorced from history or so divorced from context, I mean, I think, of course, that, you know, St. Augustine was a North African Christian and that so much of these ideas are rooted in North Africa. And then suddenly it becomes, you know, if there's anyone who's sort of a progenitor of this idea of the ideal white American male, it's Josh Holly. And so just the ways that we can, leaders can sort of cherry pick history and cherry pick theology. I always try to mention for people that Christian nationalism is nothing new, you know, it's white Christian nationalism in America. But this, this taking of Christianity and using it to gain power and using violence to achieve those means, it goes all the way back to the Crusades and must be for that as well. But I think the Crusades is a really powerful example too of what happens when religion finds itself in a seat of political power and violence is always soon to follow. So when we think about Holly in particular, so I went to the University of Missouri. He's from Missouri, originally, I don't think he even lives there anymore, but originally he's from Missouri, not far from where the Columbia is. And his wife, who's a lawyer, has, you know, I believe she has presented before the Supreme Court on some anti-abortion, alleged cases, you know, she and I know some people in common in this small world of, and I think just this way that Holly presents himself as this person who is so supportive of a very retrograde social movement, but then doesn't necessarily practice those ideals in his, in his own home, it's, it's very handmaid's tale where we have a Serena having formerly been, you know, a lawyer and someone who has a prominent voice. It just, it breaks down so quickly, and when I watch Josh Holly, I see him so desperate for applause and adulation. You can hear it in the clip, he just, he waits, he knows he's saying something that's going to get people riled up. And I think again and again, what we return to is this naked desire for power and really a naked desire to not follow God, but really to be God. And I think Augustine, while he has plenty of problems, he had a sense of humility and faithfulness that we do not see in people who are promoting Christian nationalism in this country. Oh, I, I couldn't agree more, but I want to use a couple of words very, very specifically. I know sometimes when you do a podcast, like you're saying a bunch of things extemporaneously, I want to say that I'm getting ready to use some very, very carefully chosen words. First things first, this is a bastardization of a lot of different things and history and ideology and philosophy. And it's not unintentional because in order to make the argument that you can hold quote unquote, holy power over other people, that's not acceptable. Like we now live, we're in the 21st century. It is not acceptable to say one group of people deserves to hold sway over other people. The only way you can do it is to take existing stories and histories and twist them for a purpose. And by the way, the next word that I'm going to use that I'm being very, very specific about using, this is a fascistic point of view. And one of the things that we see is that basically it's who controls the story of Western civilization and where it has arrived, right? Where does quote unquote Western civilization begin, right? Most people begin in Rome and then they move and then they do all kinds of different things. To start it with Augustine of Hippo is a very, very specific choice. And one of the things, and we're gonna listen again in a second to something I think will even elucidate this a little bit more, one of the reasons that this is done is to say that the basis of Western civilization is a Judeo-Christian basis. And when in fact you brought up violence and also, you know, you are a pastor in a Lutheran church, I want to remind people who maybe you've not heard a podcast where I've said this before, we have many problems with the founders for good reason. The reason that they created modern liberal democracy is because they saw in Europe what happened in the blood feud between the Catholic church and the Lutherans. They saw that it was every, every major European nation, people were being slaughtered, there was political upheaval, it was absolute madness. And so what did they do? They intentionally walled off church and state. They said we need to create a system in which we have a set of laws that are on a piece of paper, they're agreed to and they're followed, which treats everybody equally regardless of religion, which, you know, of course there are hypocrites on all of this stuff. To say that the basis of America is Judeo-Christian is not only wrong, it is a complete bastardization in order to enable the type of fascistic purposes, and I'll get to more of that in a second, that Josh Howley is interested in. It is a complete retelling of history and reality for the purposes that we are seeing take place right now. Yes. Yes. And this retelling, you know, it, I think it's made possible so much of this is tied into the right-wing's attack on education and attack on, you know, particularly civics education and helping schools to be able to give kids the ability to have critical thinking to be able, you know, not only the attack on education, but also the attack on journalism, the attack on news making. So everything sort of seems possible, everything seems plausible, and we lose the truth of the story. You know, so many, so many white Americans want to see themselves and you see, especially evangelicals, you see this in the alliance of American evangelicals with Israel. They want to see themselves as God's chosen people. When really the truth is if we're looking for quote unquote white people in the Bible, we're going to find them really only in the Roman soldiers. And as you point out, that's a distinctive history from this history of Judaism, of Semitic peoples. And just what, what is so much so often ignored is Jesus' Judaism and this dead that is owned by Christians to the history of the Middle East to Judaism. And so I think it really bleeds into what's happening in the Middle East today and how American Christians have such strong opinions based on really a misunderstanding of their own religious history. [BLANK_AUDIO]
