715: How MAGA Rewired Evangelical Morality with Peter Wehner

Welcome to the Holy Post. Today we have a roundup of extravagant Easter celebrations including helicopter egg drops, resurrection drone shows, and skydiving bunnies. But what do these spectacles really achieve and what do they communicate about the way of Jesus?

Then Bible sales are breaking records. Is Donald Trump the reason? And conservative writer Peter Wayner, who worked for three Republican administrations, is back to explain how MAGA has rewired evangelical morality and what pastors can do about it. Also this week, the contrasting Easter messages of the Pope and the President.

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This week's episode has Caitlin debunking a bunch of popular myths about Easter. And our newest show on HolyPost Plus is called Advice-Ish, where HolyPost media contributors offer advice to listeners facing real-life problems. Recently, Malcolm Foley talked about how to respond to people asking for money on the street, and Esau advised a parent whose daughter is being left out by classmates.

To get those shows and a whole lot more, head over to HolyPost.com and sign up for Holy Post Plus today. And thanks to everyone who's already joined our community to support our work. Here is episode 715. Hey there, welcome back to the Holy Post Podcast. I'm Phil Visher. Once again, back with you is Sky Gitani. Hi Sky. Bye Phil. Hi. And Caitlin Chess. Hi Kate. Hi Phil. Hi, you're sporting a really big pink water bottle. I'm ill. Yeah. Me and Sky both are Cold.

Yeah, I'm I'm on the mend. I'm probably uh eighty five percent better, but I can get stuck at eighty five percent for a while. Yeah. For like we And I don't I don't like it. I don't like it. What would you say you're what percent are you at, Caitlin? I was at like twenty five percent for like multiple days and I thought, Oh, my body is effectively fighting this off. Awesome.

And then Easter morning I woke up and I was like, oh no, this is really bad. I think yesterday was the peak. I think I'm probably like five percent better today. But we're not we're not really fully on the I was using my metrics differently than you. I said I You come up and then you come well, yeah, I guess you did. Yeah. Yeah. I was You're at a hundred percent. Five percent. Completely healthy. Okay, so I was at seventy five. Seventy five, okay.

few days and I thought, Oh, I'm fighting it off it's gonna be fine. I'm good. Now I'm probably at like twenty five. Oh that's worse. We're gonna hopefully. Yeah, here you are. I told our producer Mike earlier I was like I will be vertical this whole morn no. Yeah, you did text me vertical. But you meant horizontal. I will be horizontal. Wow. Brain ain't working well today. Oh percent. I did also tell Mike I was like I'm on a lot of cold medicine. So we'll see if that is good or bad boy.

Oh, everybody, you're in for a treat because Caitlin's on a lot of cold medicine. And Skye, where are you on those zero to one hundred percent scale? Uh I'm at like seventy five. Yeah. I've I've just had this malaise for the last couple of days, runny nose, a little head congestion, but I'm I'm I'm doable. I can I can make things happen. You haven't been worse than this. No, I've just been kind of a steady drip drip. So maybe the next couple of days you'll you'll crash. I could.

Okay. We'll look forward to that. And give us a report next week on how we should really have some kind of dashboard, health dashboard on our website for people to keep track of. I think the White House needs that. Well, that's a different thing. Okay, time for the theme song.

And sometimes I

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Are you saying the White House needs to keep track of our health? No. I think we all need to keep track of yeah. Occupants certain occupants of the white So it's Monday when we record this, the Monday after Easter Sunday. He was risen and still is. Can you say he is risen on Monday? Or can you on Sunday. Yeah. Yeah, Any day. Okay. You could also say it every day. And you would th then also still say he is risen indeed and it's not like okay. If you say it on Christmas, is it confusing?

It's a little weird. It's a little weird, but it's not wrong. Yeah, okay. Did you see that a bunch of people on the internet this week were like talking about the people in their church kind of critiquing them for saying Easter? They were like, You should say resurrection. Come on. Why? Is that like saying happy holidays in December? The cool kids that do it are doing. Happy Resurrection Day. Is that what the Trad Christians are doing? Maybe.

One of my children when they were young came out of their bedroom. I won't name names. Uh-huh. On Easter morning and shouted, Happy Candy Day. No. And my wife and I gave this child a look and the child then said, I mean, Christ is risen? Yeah. At least And the child was like five years old at this point. But this Yeah. Right. Yeah, it doesn't take a genius to know if you know my family. The same one that once licked powdered sugar off the ground at a baseball game.

This is true. Yes. Yeah. Yes, this child I worried was on the path towards drug abuse. Starting with sugar. Somebody dropped a waffle. A waffle cake and it put yeah, powdered sugar on it. The cake was gone. It was gone. On the ground. Yeah, well, we were packing up another child who yeah, this is like stroller age, right? And so our attention was not on this child for a brief moment and we turn back around And said child has their hands on the pavement and licking the ground with the powdered.

Sugar. Not deprived in any way, no. No, they were sugar multiplied. They were trying to keep the high going, I think. Do you did you take a picture? I need a No, uh we couldn't we were so my wife needed to be resuscitated. Yeah, that's incredible. for cameras. That's amazing. But when this child appeared with white powder on their face, I I had this glimpse to the future going, Oh Lord, please no. Yeah. You know, don't want that. But you know probably great immune ability.

Yes. I think that's what the Trad wives call it. There are statistics that show that children that grow up in farms have fewer allergies because they're exposed to so many And they can see. Right. So many pathogens and industrial farm waste. Maybe we wouldn't have gotten sick if we had licked the ground more as children.

Oh, it was uh Easter yesterday. Interest and apparently still is and it is for fifty more days, so it's you know so now that it's Easter Pope Leo. Our Chicago Pope, American Pope, had a message for the world yesterday. Uh, during his first Easter address on Sunday, Pope Leo the fourteenth made an impassioned global appeal to end wars and embrace dialogue. He said, Let those who have weapons lay them down. Let those who have the power to unleash war

Choose peace, not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue, not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them. Oh how naive. That's not how the world works. We must Dominate. Though he did not name specific conflicts in his Sunday address, Leo underlined Jesus' embrace of nonviolence in contrast to world leaders, including in the United States, who have recently invoked Christianity to justify the US and Israeli war in Iran.

The power with which Christ rose is entirely nonviolent, the Pope said. He lamented a world that is, quote, growing accustomed to violence, resigning ourselves to it, and becoming indifferent. The Pope pointed to Christ's resurrection as the solution to quote the power of death. Death looms, he said, in injustices, in partisan selfishness, in the oppression of the poor, in the lack of attention given to the most vulnerable.

And he called for a prayer vigil for peace on april eleventh, and said, On this day of celebration, let us abandon every desire for conflict, domination, and power, and implore the Lord to grant his peace to a world ravaged by wars and and marked by a hatred and indifference that makes us feel powerless in the face of evil. Okay, so that was the Pope yesterday. But I mean this is not exactly out of step. No.

For any Pope. It's it's not. It's pretty typical on Easters or Christmases for messages of world peace and you know. Yeah, it w seemed a little more specific. Maybe a little more that he had specific things in mind. In many years there are conflicts happening around the world and we just apply that message to whatever the co it's just not always the United States is in the midst of it. What? It didn't seem to just be the United States.

Exactly. In the spirit of Easter, our president then tweeted at eight AM on Easter morning. Tuesday will be Power Plant Day and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one in Iran. There will be nothing like it. Open the effing straight, you crazy mmm, or you'll be living in hell. Just watch. Praise be to Allah. That was I don't know if laughter is the right response. That was Easter. Happy Easter. I'm confused by it. I think What is the what is the end of that supposed to mean?

It's it's making fun of two billion Muslims. It's making fun of it. That either that well, there are two possibilities. Yeah. Our president converted to Islam and decided that Easter was the time to announce it. Right, right. While other people were, you know, showing up at the church to to be c to convert to Catholicism or become members of their local churches and be baptized, he decided to announce his conversion to Islam.

Or he was making fun of the world's uh uh two billion Muslim Nothing good can come of this. Yeah. Yeah. He seems to be getting worse. I mean, it hasn't been good for a long time. Right. But that's that that's really something. 'Cause we got we got war crimes in there targeting civilian infrastructure. Um, we got we're we're just being profane, which usually presidents in public statements. I mean, you know.

Johnson swore up a storm when there were no mics on, but typically when we go out in public as the president. We try to be a little more Dignified. I'm just kind of embarrassed for our country. Yeah. And I here's the other thing. I don't I'm sure there aren't a ton of highly influential Christian leaders that listen to us. But You can still salvage your reputation and your moral authority at this point by just distancing yourself from this and calling it what you know it is, which is wrong.

The defenses I've seen of this statement from Christian people online is just Insane. So I I don't know. I I I'm embarrassed for our country. I'm embarrassed for the Christian leaders that have aligned themselves with Donald Trump and who continue to defend this kind of behavior and rhetoric. Which is indefensible. And it's not too late. You can you can say this is wrong and denounce it and try to Thank you.

reestablish your moral credibility and authority, but if you keep justifying this guy You're gonna have nothing left. Can you this in this dive that he's put the kind of the dignity of the office in can you pull out of the dive in one presidency? Will it take multiple presidencies? Well there's there's multiple aspects to the dive. I think yes, with the rhetoric, absolutely. It just takes one person in that office that behaves like an adult to begin to re-establish the dignity of the office.

Yes, but we've now established that a huge proportion of the American public Doesn't mind. It's not just Trump supporters. Like there are a lot of people very critical of Trump that have praised politicians or other folks critiquing him using just as vulgar language because it's like, Oh, you're taking how seriously this is You you know what time it is. You gotta fight fire with fire. I still think there's a significant percentage of Trump supporters that genuinely don't know.

Like I I know there are people who've not seen that message. Yeah. Because there's certain media that are not broadcasting it or sharing it. Right. So I think some people would be genuinely horrified to know some of the things he says that they don't know he says. So I should be retweeting them. Is that what you're saying? I just

There's been a disservice to a lot of the country because there's a media there's a certain segment of the media that is trying to protect Trump's reputation from Trump's own behavior and rhetoric. Yeah. That's a problem. But Back to your point, I think yes, a new president could come in and restore the dignity of this office through their own behavior and dignity. For sure.

What's a lot harder to do is reestablish the trust of the United States with our allies around the world. Yeah. That have been obliterated Mm-hmm. For many reasons, including the tariff. the threats against our allies, like trying to take Greenland from Denmark, not consulting with our allies before going into this war with Iran and then turning around and chastising our allies for not helping us when we've gotten ourselves into this mess and they're not coming to our rescue.

that could take a generation to repair. And and just even if you have an amazing president that comes next. who tries to reestablish all of those ties and alliances and things like that, there's still always gonna be this cloud hanging over the United States and our allies going, Well, how do we know the Americans aren't gonna vote another Donald Trump in four years from now? Right.

So why would you make a long term commitment to being an ally of the United States when we've proven we're unreliable? We are be clouded. Kaylin, do you have enough uh thought do you have enough coherent thought through your Your medication. Well the other thing I was thinking is the people I have seen defend how the people I have seen supposedly defending Trump

Aren't defending that statement. They're defending Trump himself as a worthy candidate to support, not candidate, as a worthy president to support. In spite of this. Like, especially the Christians I've seen have been like, don't love that, but do you want a liberal in the presidency or something like that? What was our choice? And I think that

a more insidious logic to address in the Christian community than just like, hey, now I mean it's true. Like now is the time to to call out things like this when you see it. But I also think the problem is people feel some like residual need to say, Oh, I don't really like that but they feel this additional need to follow it up very quickly with But I still support him, or but he's better than the alternative, or but and I think we just we need to find a way to to teach people that.

actually, even if you voted for someone, that actually puts you in a greater position to critique them really strongly and not to always justify the decision at the end of it. And I mean, to something that we have said many times before, part of the problem is

People are so committed to the decisions they've made. They're so ashamed if they end up being wrong or if they regret what they've done. There's no room for them to turn around and say, actually, this was the straw that broke the camel's back. This was too far. I now realize how wrong this was. Instead, they have to channel their sense that this is really wrong, that was really wrong to tweet, and not just the language, but the approach to to human beings lives.

But they don't know how to do that without saying, Yeah, that's bad What is But it must have been a good decision'cause I already made it. What's the Is okay, so now he's done enough that he's losing some MAGA support. So you've got, you know, Marjorie Taylor Green saying, This is nuts. He's crazy. We've And he's not a Christian, she says. Yeah, we've got Alex Jones saying, This is nuts. He's crazy.

We've got Tucker Carlson saying, This is nuts. He's crazy. Uh what we don't have is Franklin Graham or Pastor Robert Jeffries or Paula White. So why are the Christians That's easy. But it it's hard when you said God chose this man to go back on that. Yes, because if they now change their mind they have to either say I

did not discern God's wills correct God's will correctly or God himself was wrong about Donald Trump and they can't do that. So that's the danger of invoking God's Blessing on any candidate. Oh boy. That's interesting. But yeah. There was the there was the one there was the one profit during the uh was it the first term or was it the you know, it was the twenty twenty four election.

who said, Trump will win, I I have a prophecy from God, and then he lost, and actually said, I'm not gonna call myself a prophet anymore. Mm-hmm. He said, I'm just I'm gonna step back and recognize with humility Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. So there's one. Yeah, okay. I'm happy. But here here's the problem though, like w the people who wanna say, Yeah, this is wrong or bad or terrible, but he's better than the alternative. Right. He's currently not running for office.

Against any alternative. You had you could have chosen Nikki Haley back in 2024 in the primary. You could have chosen Ron DeSantis in the primary in 24. You did not have to pick Donald Trump. Nothing he's saying or doing right now as bad as it is is not it wasn't unpredictable. Like he has been erratic and uncouth and dehumanizing and vulgar and saber rattling war crimes forever. He's always done this. Yeah, yeah, but but the first term didn't turn out to be as bad as we were.

And some adults that wouldn't let him. And there are people like General Kelly and um what's his name? The big mustache guy. Bolton. Bolton. Like a lot of people who worked for him in the first term that warned if he gets elected again, he's not gonna have people like us around him. Yeah. Oh, wait a minute.

I well, my point is there were options. If you are a strongly conservative, Republican, Christian, pro-life voter and you felt like, well, my only option was Trump. No, it wasn't. You had other options. Yeah, but once the once the primary was done, you had no other options and so you were out of options. That's my point. Is he not running for office right now? You can critique him as much as you want and say, call the balls and strikes when he says something that's wrong.

Give you letting the other teams score points. No, you're not. You're holding elected leaders accountable. Yeah. I do think it's really personal for a lot of people. It's I have to admit that I made a wrong judgment and that's a pretty big ask for some people, especially

when maybe their entire platform or their ministry is based on I'm the one that knows. I know I know what God is saying, or I'm the faithful one that can discern what we should do or if you have to admit that maybe you were wrong about something. I th that's why that's why I'm saying you have a limited amount of space left if you find yourself in that camp.

To try to restore your moral credibility and your respectability as a Christian leader. But if you continue down the track of justifying this man and his behavior, you're gonna have nothing left of a reputation. It's i he everyone who has attached themselves to Donald Trump. many, many years has been destroyed in the aftermath. He just doesn't Yeah. New Year's resolutions are hard for me for at least two reasons. First, because forming new habits is just a hard.

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Okay, back to Easter. I'm going back to Easter because Christians were doing some really impressive things this Easter. For example, Compass Church in Monterey County, California hosted its annual Easter egg drop at the local sports complex on March 28th. A helicopter dropped 100,000 eggs. on Rabobank Stadium in two separate egg drops, and also included a skydiving Easter bunny. Wait, I can get into this now. Diving Easterbury.

It would totally be my church's Easter bunny skydiving. That sounds awesome. I'm kind of into it. At Cultivate Church in Alabaster, Alabama. Alabaster, Alabama. Wow. Leaders expect uh White. I knew, I knew it was coming. I was like waiting for it from Sky. Their uh Easter outreach event they expected to draw around twenty thousand people. They had a helicopter drop twenty thousand eggs. How does that not hurt people? 'Cause they're plastic. They don't weigh anything.

Are the people out when they're falling? Aren't they supposed to have candy in them? Yeah. But do they just drop them in every I think they drop them and everyone looks from afar and then descends? I think that's what it is. Stand back, everyone. We're gonna drop twenty th I would think if you just drop twenty thousand eggs, they kinda end up in a similar location. Yeah, uh they don't have little parachutes on each one. What if we start making the drop part of Easter? I don't know.

Oh no. I didn't I didn't. with my grandkids. Yeah. Okay, kids, I'm going up on the roof. Get ready for the drop. Uh oh, grandpa dropped instead of the egg. Oh dear. But they only dropped dropped twenty thousand eggs instead of a hundred thousand, so I don't think Jesus was impressed with that. And but they did, they gave away thousands of free hot dogs. So that's that's an Easter tradition, I believe. Giving away free hot dogs.

Sure. The River Community Church in East Cookville, Texas was the site of another big event, an Easter drone show, sponsored by the local Christian radio station. Wow. Uh the church's property includes a hundred foot plus tall white cross visible from Interstate forty, and on Good Friday, hundreds of illuminated drones soared above the cross, creating a visual display that tells the story of the resurrection. The event concluded with fireworks.

So Good F that was Good Friday. I th shouldn't Good Friday end with fireworks? Fireworks on Good Friday. I think it I think it was the Romans celebrating that night. Yeah. Well maybe it was to simulate the earthquake and the, you know, the rumbling of the the world. In Manville, Texas, the church on Masters Road led a coalition of churches to put on a massive drone show telling the Easter story.

Um on Easter night, they did it the whole thing f every night for Holy Week, but the biggest one was on Easter night. Started uh oh, they had ten thousand drones on Easter night. I they believe it was the largest drone show in North America. To date. Have you seen'cause the ones in China, those are amazing. I didn't know how cool drone shows could be and I saw one recently and I was like, Whoa that's it's actually incredible.

It is it is it is cool. But that's what we need to re rejuvenate Christianity. Okay, can we More more drone shows. It how do we feel about attracting big crowds in the direction of church? Can I give like the tiniest positive view on this? Even though I generally speaking dislike this. If we don't like it, we'll say it's the day quill. Okay, great, great. Yeah. I'll I'll email later and be like, take that out. Yeah, and then we'll see if Sky agrees with it.

Okay. I don't I generally dislike this for probably the same grumpy reasons that Skye might dislike it, but I do Your reasons are grumpy. Not just that you have reasons, but that they're ill tempered reasons. But I will I will say Skye and I recorded a Getting Schooled last week on like myths of Easter and one of them was that Easter is not as important as Christmas.

I do appreciate churches that probably do things like this around Christmas. If this is your way of making a big deal of Christmas, it's not the way I would do it. But if this is your same way, I'm glad you're at least consistent in also doing it at Easter. Yeah. When Easter should be the primary Christian holiday and not Christmas. Church drops fifty Santas from a helicopter.

Listen, I'm just saying, if you put on a dramatic presentation at Christmas, which a lot of these kinds of churches I imagine do, they probably do a show or fireworks or whatever. I'm glad at least you're doing it for Easter as well. Is this The equivalent to historic passion plays and so that it's you know it's Doesn't seem quite as focused on what actually happened.

I I think what's more interesting about these stories and I remember when I had to report on these at C T back in the day No I did not go but I Because I do have some questions. I love egg drop soup. Um what I think is the more interesting thing that no one really ever talks about in these stories is A sort of theology of the spectacular. Like, why, especially in American evangelicalism, are we so drawn to spectacular things? Like Is that really unique?

Oh no, I don't think it's unique, but Yes, but I but there's a difference I think because Well, it's not it's not totally different. When you go to an amazing cathedral in Europe that took hundreds of years to build it's also spectacular. And and there's a message in the spectacular that I think we don't We need to be more explicit. Mm-hmm. Any display of spectacular anything is a display of power.

So when you go when you walk into a town in Europe and you see this giant cathedral, what's being communicated is the church here has power. We control things and look at the magnificent thing we can build. if it it was often local leaders or kings that were driving those projects as a show of Power. Yes. Instead, so when when you put on a giant drone show or you're dropping tens of thousands of eggs or what

Is communicating is we have power, we are significant, we have status. Don't you want to be a part of something that has this kind of Yes, I do. I think it's a it's a display of wealth. It's a display of influence. It's a display of I putting up a giant cross that you can see from miles around, like that's a display of power. Interesting. We don't think about it that way, but it is. It's a display of power. And the the question we need to be asking is: how does this fit with the way Jesus?

used spectacular displays of power. We didn't have access to drone technology. Things could have gone very differently. Or I think a more nuanced approach is important. I would not argue that it's always wrong. Yeah. Right? It's not always wrong. Because Jesus does display spectacular power at times. But what we do need to look at is when does he do it? How does he do it? Why does he do it? And mostly Easter and Christmas.

And but well no, but that's the other side of it, is it's really telling when he doesn't

Well wait, Jesus did display spectacular power on Easter. He rose. But I would argue it was not spectacular. Because for some no, hold on, hold out. To for something to be spectacular, it needs to be both large and public. So Oh. For example, when he fed the multitudes, that's a spectacular display of power. Spectacle. It's a spectacle. Okay, okay. So the resurrection was amazing. It was not a spectacle because very few people saw. Yes, so a spectacle requires spectators.

And it can't be spectacular unless there's spectators to spectate the spectacle. Right, which is why spectacle is inherently powerful. It's a display of power in front of large groups of people. Okay. And I think because Evangelicalism is a populist form of Christianity. It it it is always interested in how do I impact as many people as quickly as possible. So we are a tradition that tends to be more attracted to spectacles. Prone to spectacle. But you can't do that.

Divorce it from the power aspect of it all. And I think this is where it gets weird, especially for Easter, because so much of the cross and the resurrection. is the centerpiece of our faith, but they are the antithesis of spectacle. Because when Jesus is on the cross He people are saying, Hey, prove you're the Messiah, come down, do something spectacular and he says no.

And instead it was a display of weakness and shame. And then the resurrection, as powerful as it was, was intimate. It was small. It was entrusted to a handful of people. And it changed the world, but it was not a massive display for everyone to see that immediately put all of his enemies to shame. Right. It was so I just think it's interesting when you we try to take something like Easter and rather than displaying the truth of the gospel through

the subtle displays of oh transformed world, which is mostly relational. We try to do it with the spectacular because that's the world's way. Well, yeah, and it's also something you can manage top down right and control completely. So an entrepreneurial pastor can say, I want a spectacle to happen. I w I want to have an impact in my community.

in a way that I can manage from top down. That's right. Like a corporation. As opposed to trying to get people somehow to be the kinds of people that on their own, with their own initiative, go out into the community and build relationships. with people'cause we did out of the salt shaker and I gave'em the four spiritual laws and it just never quite took Well it is it's interesting. So I'm gonna drop an Easter bunny.

When the disciples are arguing about who's greatest, how does Jesus respond to that? He washes their feet, right? He... Undoes their desire for power and spectacular displays. What if my church did the world's largest foot washing and it was certified by Guinness? I bet someone has. Yeah. Yes, I've had some money.

I I don't disagree with Sky. I mean, my impulse when I my instinct when I hear a story like this is something about this is off. I do think the s the parallel desire in the beautiful cathedral and something like this. is not just about power. It's about showing people with effort and money what we value. And so a cathedral, I would argue, is different and and better in that it is like more longstanding than something like this.

It's like generations can can be drawn closer to God by the the architectural design, by the artwork. But I also think it it it reflects less on a particular like the Catholic Church is so broad and so many people ended up funding a particular cathedral. It's hard to be like this reflects well on one pastor the way that this can. So there are certainly differences. But I do think both the th the the more charitable take on both is a desire to

concentrate your resources towards a display that shows people what you value. The prop the other problem with a lot of the Easter ones is that I don't know what an Easter bunny and Easter egg. says about valuing the resurrection of Jesus. Um, which is why I said earlier it's it's different than a passion play.

But I do wanna say I think some of these churches are trying to they're trying to find something to quantify, to your point. You can't quantify number of people that go out and make friends with people in their neighborhood as easily as you can quantify ten bajillion eggs that we you know, threw out of a helicopter. But

I want to honor the impulse that I think some pastors have, which is what can I do with the resources available to me that matches the kind of cultural context I'm in, that shows people how important this day is and how important telling that to our community is. And that's a good impulse. To your point, it's a lot harder to do

that in a quantifiable or disguise point in a spectacular way along the lines of what Jesus actually did. But there are churches who I think have a good desire for this. I just think it goes in a way When when I look at the gospels and you look at the stories of where Jesus does do something spectacular, meaning there's a there's a crowd and something incredible happens.

The two things that jump out are one, he's always meeting a genuine need that other people have. Whether it's calming the storm to s to help his buddies out in the boat or feeding people who are hungry who have been following him or They're all to serve a real need. And secondly, they all in some form are remote. Reversal of the curve.

So somebody is sick, he heals them. Some people are hungry, they're fed. There's some and it as much as it does validate his identity and draw some attention to himself, that's not the primary goal because he does plenty of things secretly without Right displaying those aren't spectacular, but the spectacle ones are reversals of the curse that genuinely serve other people. And these kinds of spectacles tend to not do either of those things. Okay, what about

A four hundred dollar Bible. Does that Spectacular. Reverse the curve. in some way. New York Times reporting on the growing number of Americans buying high-end and high-priced copies of the Bible. The growing category of premium Bibles. That's what I'm in the market for. Oh no, I don't want this pedestrian Bible. Where'd you keep the premium one? I could only afford the deluxe. Yeah.

includes a wide array of translations assembled with high quality materials, genuine leather covers, and in many cases extras like elaborate color illustrations. The retail cost can run up to four hundred dollars for a single Bible. Sky Klein No relation. Sky Klein has been selling premium Bibles online since the early early two thousands and later began producing his own, sourcing materials like calfskin leather from Italy and paper milled in France.

His sales began growing during the coronavirus pandemic, and they haven't stopped growing. Mr. Klein attributes his success to a few factors, including a gravitation toward handmade long-lasting objects and a push away from instant artificial blue light culture. So do you really want to just read the Bible on your phone, or do you want to have Yeah. I actually really like that phrase. Artificial. What's it what do you say? Let's go. Yeah. Ja, das ist eigentlich... It's a good way to do it.

Bible sales tend to surge after major geopolitical events like the invasions of Iran and Ukraine, mister Klein said. The assassination assassination of Charlie Kirk last year also prompted a big spike in premium Bible sales on his website. I need not just a Bible, I need a

fancy one. The trend is part of a larger expansion in Bible sales. Did you know this over the last five years? Confounding experts and running against broader trends in book publishing. Bible sales have grown steadily since twenty twenty one. and have set annual sales records since 2022. Last year, nineteen million Bibles were sold in the United States, a 21-year high, and double the volume sold in 2019. Do we need to create our own holy post media premium bible?

Well, we need a basic one for you know Right. Yeah. Once you've read through the lower one, you can upgrade. We need the upsell. And we'll gradually we'll put in more comments into the Bibles from the three of us. 'Cause that's what people need. 'cause that's what you're paying for. Gonna have an apocrypha of butt news, is that the plan? My gosh. You there's actually enough in the Bible.

There yeah, and we I could do like a cross-reference bible, just related but related verses that connect to each other and and form sort of a systematic theology of the butt. I'm supposed to stop talking about We're done. Mike says move on, says Mike. Alright, but in seriousness. And serious. Okay, you want to know the craziest thing about this? I looked up the Humble Lamb Bible that's mentioned in this article. It's like these really Company.

It's a company. It's all these really like beautiful leather Bibles, but they all have designs on the pages. Yeah. But they're all very like Edge. They're very like flowy Jesus hair. Like Jesus is on there and he's got like curls cascading down his like they just are kind of I wonder if that's original art or if there's a Like this one, he's coming out of the tomb, but his hair's flowing behind him. Yeah. He's wearing a shirt in that one, but I could find one with abs probably. Okay.

Is that what at least but it's not like a gun and American flag? No, it's very good. Nice. What do we think about okay, I have a Bible from the eighteen hundreds that would have cost a family. It was a classic family Bible. Th the the cover is wood. Carved wood. You know, it's just and and people would pass them down from generation to generation and record all of their births and deaths. Right. A lot of families have that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah, and those were quite expensive.

Yes, because because printing was expensive and illustration was expensive and it was a it was a rare, valuable object. Yeah. So they're saying we're we're kinda going back in that direction of having an heirloom quality Bible that you will want to pass on to your kids. I ought to touch Yes, he said. But like, I mean$400 is a lot of money for any book. Yeah. But A true family heirloom that you would pass on for generations, four hundred dollars doesn't seem like

I don't know. I just feel like it's in that weird zone of It's not like Watch collectors. Yeah. I bet people are not actually doing I mean they're buying multiple of these. 拜拜 A Bible shield. What does that mean? Which is a protective home for your Bible, i.e. a little bat. The purse. A Bible purse. Yeah. That sounds less. It's a SHIELD A shield for your bike. Shield. It should be a holster. Right. Yeah. Are these made of lamb skin? Is that why it's called humble lamb?

I think it's Humble Lamb in the like Jesus. But I should double check, you know? So one time when I was a college student, I was uh in the Middle East, I'll just say. I won't designate what country I was in. I don't know. And I I was talking to some Muslims about Christianity. Well there there's I don't even know what your Right. No, it is calfskin. There you go. Well that's calfskin. Calf skin goats. There's both.

So I was talking to them about uh Christianity and I had my Bible with me, and at the time the Bible I was using was being held together by duct tape. Uh huh. Exactly. And and that that

open me to the reality that cultures have different values around these kinds of things. And so I don't want to flat out say a a very beautifully made and illustrated and expensive Bible is always bad or wrong. No, it's not. But um, you know, I don't think it's a bad idea to have very relatively inexpensive, accessible copies of the scripture.

You you can download the Bible for free on your phone. So that's and uh people will send you a free Bible. So there's no there there's no limit to accessibility of scripture. It's just for the true connoisseur of scripture. That's where I don't if it's a vanity thing, I guess that's different. I don't know. I can't I could never imagine myself buying a four hundred dollar bible.

How do you feel about the general doubling of Bible sales in the last six seven years? What does it mean? Caitlin, you're you're uh even more free with your ideas now since you're drugged. What do you think? About the increase in Bible sales? Yes. I have no idea. Mm-hmm. I if more people own a Bible than used to own a Bible, I would say that might be not a huge net positive, but it's definitely a net positive. If more people own more Bibles.

That they don't give away to anyone and they are only one person who can only read one at a time. Yeah. Then that might be a neutral effect on the world. I'm gonna withhold my judgment of this until I see some movement in biblical illiteracy. Yeah. Right? Because every year that comes out, that surveys We don't know nothing. Right. So the fact that there are more Bibles being sold, okay. If more people actually open them and read them. Exactly. That will be a win.

gonna be Trump standing with a Bible in front of a church and just saying, like, look at this Bible, and someone says, Is that your Bible? And you say, It's a Bible. And he's holding upside down like it doesn't really matter. Okay, so so let's we gotta force rank some things here. Um s uh increased Bible sales, skydiving Easter bunnies, hundred thousand egg egg drops. Um drone shows that explain the resurrection. What are we most to least excited about?

Skydiving bunnies is like top of the Excuse me. That's incredible. Yeah. I love that. I uh I like a good drone show. Uh-huh But That's the most Jesus y one of those, technically. If it tells the story of the resurrection. If it's a a way to give the good news. Maybe. We're always we evangelicals adopt every new technology and enlist it to the cause of sharing the gospel. Which has its pros. So drones are just the next an AI AI Okay, okay.

Maybe what could go wrong? Okay. But the egg drop, would you put the egg drop at the bottom of uh your list? Mm-hmm. That just sounds inherently dangerous. Yeah. And not super environmental. We should all next year go to one. Are they biodegradable eggs? Where's the closest egg drop? Everything from this list is in the South. I'm gonna find it.

I I think the Bible s more Bible sales are good. I just hope it's it's indicative of something more that's happening that we don't have the data on yet. But we'll see. Yeah. We'll see. Uh Donald Trump brought up that statistic in a way that implied he was responsible for it. Actually I don't think he's he may not be wrong. So to bring it full circle to our our our president, um one of the silver linings in this whole era, this MAGA Christian nationalist era is I think

Sometimes when you when you see a really extremely distorted version of something, it helps you remember the value of the actual thing. And I think some people, even I've talked to people who have no church background, they're not Christians, and they've said things to me like

Even I know that's not what Jesus is like. Yeah. Yeah. And it has awakened some people, I think, to be receptive to the message that Pope Leo gives or that the gospels give. And I think some people are genuinely intrigued again by wait a minute, what?

What did Jesus say? Right. Because what I'm hearing his representatives in my country say about him seems pretty bonkers. And if that turns people to go buy a Bible and open their nose to the gospels, wonderful. But I do think there's this weird portion of Christianity coming from MAGA is making some people be intrigued by the true message of Jesus again.

So you think there are people that might be saying right now, wait, is praise be to Allah a traditional Easter greeting? I better go check the Bible. Yeah, that can happen. Maybe. Um, we could have gone to one yesterday an hour away. Why it's a combo. Really? From a helicopter. It doesn't say it doesn't say how many, but we There's not fewer than twenty. So next year I'll do my research. We can't. Maybe we could have a a Holy Post media sponsor.

If they drop if they don't reopen the Straits of Hormuz, we're not gonna have cheap enough plastic to make that many eggs. Okay. Or fuel for helicopters. Well. If it happens next year, I think we should go just to just to see. Yeah. And we can we can report. We can do a live. Then we're not just speaking from ignorance. I want to be I I will insist on putting myself in a position where I can be struck by eggs as they fall. Otherwise, I'm not doing it. Okay. I mean we can't Throw eggs at you.

No, I want'em to hit me. I want the eggs to hit me. Okay. I want that. It's kind of a you know, it's a dare. It's a We can make that happen right now. We can throw eggs at you. It's not. No walk out onto the street. Yeah, let's see. Everybody, if you run into Phil somewhere, just keep an egg and Thanks to hit me. This has been our special Easter edition of the Holy Post Podcast. There are other

more serious stories I had on my list, but we'll save those for next week. So come back next week'cause there's some stuff we gotta talk about besides eggs and but skydiving bunnies. That's uh Only thing better would be a skydiving sky. Oh I don't do that. Yeah. Love Sky. How much would we have to pay you? A lot. We should do the three of us jump out of an airplane. No. 'Cause you can pay like twenty bucks and they film it from your helmet. No.

Yeah. You think our CEO would approve of the three of us skydiving together? I th I think that would be amazing. We're not even allowed to fly on the same commercial. Holy cow. Thanks everybody. Hope you had a good Easter. We'll be back next week with more news. See you next time.

Peter Wayner is a political analyst, writer, and former presidential speechwriter for George W. He also worked in the Reagan and H.W. Bush administrations. He's now a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a Senior Fellow at the Trinity Forum. A few of his most recent articles include How Trump Killed Conservatives.

And the evangelicals who see Trump's viciousness as a virtue. As an insider of both the Republican Party and the Evangelical Church for decades, Weiner has a unique perspective on how the MAGA movement has reshaped both of them. And that's what I wanted to talk to him about when he came to visit us at the Holy Post Media Studio. Here's my conversation with Pete Wayner. Peter Wayner, welcome to the Holy Post. Great to be with you. Thanks for hosting me.

I'm so grateful to have you in studio. You're in town to do some teaching and lecturing and meetings at Wheaton College. Exactly. And you popped over here, downtown Wheaton to join us in studio. Um you've been on the show before, it's been a while. I don't expect you to remember all that, but you're still writing a lot. You wrote a piece just earlier this week in The Atlantic called How Trump Killed Conservatives.

And one of the lines that jumped out to me is you said MAGA is not just antithetical to conservatism, it's at war with it. Right. I'm guessing some MAGA voters would be surprised to know that because I think the ones I've talked to often consider themselves conservatives. So unpack that. Why would you say MAGA is not just against conservatism but actively opposed?

Yeah, I'd say it for a couple of reasons. I mean I'd say partly because of what MAGA is, what it represents, um, ideologically, uh, which is I think much more of a populist ethnic nationalist movement than a conservative movement. And uh what I consider to be conservatism, at least authentic conservatism, conservatism rightly understood. And you know, I became a conservative was when I was a young man, I still consider myself to be a conservative.

the reason I became a member of the Republican Party and served in three Republican administrations, including in in in the um George W. H. White House, was because the Republican Party was in in perfect repository, political party repository of conservatism. it it's not a perfect match, no political party ever is for a for a conservative or a liberal or any other um political theory, political philosophy.

Um, but I I just, you know, I resist the impulse and have really since the Trump movement, MAGA movement began, to refer to it as conservatism because I think it's it's alien um to it. And as I said, I think it's an enemy of it. I think about conservatism in sort of three different strata. Um

one strata is what's traditionally viewed as conservative public policy. So that could be tax policy, it could be national defense, national security, it could be welfare, healthcare, all of all of all of those. Then there's the category of political philosophy, the size and role of government in in uh in uh in in life. And then there's the category of temperament and disposition. And that particular essay that I did in The Atlantic, I focused in Mose.

on what I understand to be temperamental conservatism, what that means, and why I think uh that uh that uh Trump and the MAGA movement are antithetical to to that aspect of conservatism. So I I mean it's hard to disagree with you that it they're antithetical to conservatism and p we'll link to your article, people can read that. But MAGA wasn't exactly a foreign invader to the Republican Party. Right. So I if it took over or it's if it's not conservative, where did this

exists prior to the MAGA movement.'Cause it had to be there, right? Within republicanism. Where was it? Why wasn't it more expressed? And what was it about Trump and twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen that brought all this forward? Yeah, it's a good question. I and I've argued um ever since uh Trump came out of the political scene and had the success that he did in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen.

He didn't appear uh ex Nilo. He didn't appear out of nothing. He tapped into elements that existed within the Republican Party. People go back to twenty sixteen. you know, he was not the favorite of establishment conservatives, he was not the favorite of the evangelical movement. Um They um were allied more around people like Ted Cruz. That was more more of their their uh cup of tea. But Trump was able to tap into something. So what did he tap into?

I think what he tapped into were um elements within the Republican Party that were moving away from traditional conservatism. Reagan the personification up for a lot of people within politics would be Ronald Reagan. And it was moving into a more populist, nationalist direction. So l let me illustrate what I mean. If you listened, you know, to talk radio, uh, which predated podcasts.

Uh Rush Limbaugh was the dominant figure uh in talk radio for years, really for as long as he was there. R R Rashko's National around nineteen eighty eight. He'd been local in Sacramento. Once the nineteen nineties comes. He is a huge figure. I think William F. Buckley Junior taps him to be sort of the most important c conservative voice. Yeah, he seems he's a counterbalance to the Clinton years.

Exactly. Exactly. And for a lot of people on the right, he was a way to get their message out in her. They felt like the quote unquote lame stream media was biased, p politically liberal, which I think is a fair critique uh of it. The sensibilities of of of media were were were not particularly uh attuned to to conservatism.

Uh so uh uh by the time you get to the two thousands, there there are a lot of people, uh Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, others. There's a rush spawns this entire generation of conservative talk radio people. And if you were listening to talk radio in the two thousands in particular, it started in the nineties. We saw some of these impulses. 1992, Patrick Buchanan challenges George H. W. Bush. And if you look back at the Buchanan campaign, that was in many ways

the playbook, at least the ideological playbook, uh, that Trump tapped into in America first. The what the critics would say is isolationism, nativism, and protectionism. That was Buchanan. Yeah, Buchanan's a very different figure than Then Donald Trump. Um Buchanan was really well educated, is a very good writer. He tapped into that. He challenges Bush in ninety two. He failed.

But you could see Rush Limbaugh at that time struggled a little because there was a part of what the Buchanan message, the populist message, the anger at the establishment that resonates with him. But in the end Russ sort of stays with with Bush, is with the establishment, quote unquote, but it's uncomfortable. I'm in the White House in uh during the Bush presidency, so that's two thousand one to two thousand and eight. We are advocating a immigration reform bill. Mm-hmm. I remember it vividly.

Yeah, so that's the beginning of the second term. This is two thousand and five. And uh we end up failing to get that comprehensive immigration reform bill passed. And um the main reason that we do is that there is an uprising on the right. And that's led by Talk Radio. So you could see these sort of populist movements, uh instincts, reactions, um, on the American right, and you began to see it in Europe too. Mm-hmm.

By the time you get to about two thousand ten, two thousand eleven, if you're listening to talk radio, you're gonna hear most of them critical of Obama. But thirty-five or forty percent of the time you may listen h hear them critical of Mitch McConnell. As well. And one of the issues was Obamacare. And so they're scorching Mitch McConnell for not stopping Obamacare. For those who don't know, leader of the Senate Republican leader of the Senate. Republican leader of the Senate. Right.

So it wouldn't have mattered even if you could uh if you could vote against Obamacare as a law because uh Obama was present, he could have vetoed it. So there was no way practically speaking. that uh that Mitch McConnell could do uh undo Obamacare. But that didn't matter. There was just this anger, this sort of populist impulse. The establishment has let us let us down. That's out there, that's brewing, it's growing, the resentments are growing, and Trump taps into that.

Okay. So th this I'm good thank you for the history background because one of the questions I've had for a while is if this stream has always been there on the right, I don't think it was invented by Donald Trump, obviously. You mentioned Pat Buchanan. Others are even prior to that, you can go back to the nineteen sixties and see this on the right. It's always been there. My question has been

Why did it explode when it exploded? And here's one of my theories. You tell me if I'm onto something or if it's irrelevant. I wonder if it had simply been talk radio, would we have continued to have this certain percentage of Republican voters who kind of are angling towards a populist, nationalist, protectionist thing, but they never would have had the significant influence they did. But with the advent of social media and this accelerant of populism

Not only would it explain what's happened in the US, but as you pointed out, in Europe. Like the technology changed, communication changed and it it seems perfectly designed. to take the the shrillest, most outrageous voices and give them an audience and a platform and throw kerosene on the thing as as you point out in your article. Um is that the the necessary um ingredient that makes Trump possible in twenty sixteen in a way he m uh Buchanan was not possible in ninety two.

Yeah, it's a really good question. And I think you're on to some and there's no question in my mind that social media uh made this made this possible for any number of um of reasons. Um one of them is what you were alluding to, which is social media as we've discovered, um and contrary to what a lot of people thought in the nineties, which is what would bring us together, it's it's polarized.

And it has this capacity because of its nature, it's intrinsic to social media, to inflame the passions of people on all sides. Well, conservatism, uh, at least pro properly understood as I understand it, and I think the great

thinkers of conservatism, great contributors of conservatism, and the American founders. What was their chief concern? It was the inflammation of the passions of the people. That's the reason Madison and the others designed the Constitution the way they did. Check balance People sir is a great beast. Exactly. Yeah. Right. So what's the Senate supposed to do? Cool the saucer, right? D uh separation of powers. Frustration, yeah. Legislation goes slower.

Um, but we're willing to take that because Madison and the others are saying we've studied history, the danger of democracy is unchecked passions, populism. So what happens is there's this p populist movement growing independent of social media, but n social media taps into it. Then it creates the capacity to organize um uh in in ways that you that people didn't have before. And then I would

ad apart from Trump, but I think relevant to this moment, is he himself is a Sue Generous figure, right? So if Trump never came onto the scene, it's possible that, you know, Ted Cruz or somebody else could have been nominated. And this would have gone in a somewhat different direction. I don't think in a totally different direction'cause I think these populist impulses were too were too strong.

But they wouldn't have been personified in Trump. So what was it about Trump that allowed him to become the leader of that movement? And part of it was that he was a celebrity, and I wouldn't underestimate that the apprentice. He was he was known to And he spoke in a way that shocked the sensibilities of a lot of people. But for a lot of people on the American right, particularly the energized primary voters, they viewed him as as uh uh a uh

uh authentic figure that he would uh he would shake things up, uh he would kind of burn down the establishment which they had they had grown to to hate. And then you had certain figures like Os Guinness who wasn't uh associated with MAGA per se, but in twenty seventeen I mean... even if he's got some qualms about Trump, he's referring to Trump as God's wrecking ball.

of which he meant well Trump is an imperfect instrument, but at least he's stopping the movement on the left, progressivism, which Oz and many others considered overwhelmingly the threat to uh to America. And I think what they didn't see was how much danger Trump would be to the country and to conservatism itself.

I Oz and I we haven't talked in many years. He's friend and one of the earliest guests we actually had on the show back in twenty twelve. And I was surprised to see some of his turn. And I understood this is a very common argument you heard from a lot of not just evangelical intellectuals, but many others saying, Well, it's the lesser of two evils. Right. And the threat from the left is so great. We need to hold our nose, as they often said, and vote for Trump. And and they did.

Um one of the things you bring up in this article though that I uh I'm curious to go a little deeper in is you talk about how Current the current MAGA movement seems poised to devour itself because there's this internal destruction and division that's going on and it's really nasty and really ugly and we could talk about the various characters involved.

Um, but fueling a lot of it seems to be this excitement about transgression. Yeah. Like everyone's trying to push the envelope to be more outrageous in the things they're saying and doing.

Does this movement burn itself out because of the values that its embrace are just not sustainable? I suspect that'll happen. I don't know what on the timeline in which in in which it'll happen, but I think you described it well. I think that what's happened now is a kind of habit of mind and thought. certain tropisms, ther certain reflexes.

that have um that have happened. I think ten years of the age of Trump has rewired the circuitry of an awful lot of people in MAGA world and also cr Christians. Yeah, you you to quote you back to yourself, you said that Trump has rewired the moral circuitry of evangelicals and fundamentalist Christians. Yeah. Yeah, I do think that that has that has happened and and it's an interesting thing, right, if you observe these

uh fights that are going on, whether it's, you know, Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin against Megan Kelly and Tucker Carlson and Candace Owen. I mean there are a lot of different players that are in involved in this. It's not that they disagree, though that's interesting, the reason they disagree But it's the ferocity of of of the insult.

And I think what has happened is that they ha ha s I think some of it is probably cynical. It's clickbait. It's viewers. It's how you get attention. I think some of that is going on. But I also think that this is the power of a president to create a kind of ethic. And I think what's happened is that these people who have been in this space feeds off of anger, conflict, and antipathy. Now most of that for the Trump era has been pointed against liberals and progressives.

But I think it was almost inevitable that it would turn within and this is a phrase from from you know, the French revolution, which is revolution eats its its young. And so I think this is what's going on. And if you follow these figures who were involved in this, um, or even if you talk to them when they're y you know, not necessarily these podcasters and talk radio hosts, but just people within the MAGA movement.

Uh it is like um I don't know, like a dopamine hit, right? They there's something that uh vivifies them, that that excites them, that gives them a certain sense of of purpose. So it's almost like an addiction. And that addiction is directed in a in I think a way that's that's that's really I mean, any addiction is a problem, but this is this is an addiction that's destroying our political and civic

culture. Yeah. And I guess it w it would be entertaining if it wasn't so dangerous. Right. Right. So to watch them turn on each other, it's a little bit you live by the sword, you die by the sword. They built this whole movement on anger and viciousness towards their external enemies. So when it turns internal, there's a little bit of Justice in it all.

Except this is the movement that's currently governing our country and having a massive influence on geopolitics. We're in the midst of a war in the Middle East because of this movement. So that's the frightening part of it all. Okay, let me let me turn it to this. You bring up Evangelicals, fundamentalist Christians, the the pivotal role that they had in in the rise of Trump and the MAGA movement, their rewiring or recircuitry of their moral compass.

If the Evangelical Church in America has some responsibility for the rise of this movement, What responsibility does it have in its aftermath? If I like you, who knows when this thing implodes, right? There will be a world after Donald Trump. There will be some American. If you were advising Christian leaders around the country, what would you tell them they need to be doing, not just in the future, but now?

Not in penance for what they failed to do in the past, but How do we make sure that we come out of this? Better. Not just as a country, but as a church. Because it seems like there was a lot of failure that led to this in the first place. Yeah, for for sure. And I I've talked to a lot of pastors, um, people in ministry over the over the years and uh they would they would concede that. I think um

And I many of'em are horrified by what's by what's happened. Um they're not quite sure how we got to the spot, um, where where it got out of control. And they really don't know in real time what to do about it. I've had a lot of conversations with pastors. Um, and I'm curious, what what kind of things are you hearing from them? I mean, beyond I don't know how we got here, yeah. Are they Uh is it self reflective at all or is it all just uh it it's out of our control?

No, I mean for a l for a number of them that I've had conversations with, it is self reflective. Uh how do we get here? Um, what's the role of the church? What didn't we see? Um it's a kind of failure of a catechesis. It was a failure to shape the dispositions, uh the spiritual, moral, temperamental disposition. Um I think a lot of people um were sort of on the sidelines. And I think what also happened is I think what's happened is a kind of CAT scan on the evangelical soul.

And one of my suppositions, and it's one that I think a lot of ministers would agree with me um on, uh as if they if they reflected on it or as they reflect on it in conversations with me, which is I think in a lot of churches, particularly in evangelical churches, there are scripts that we read off of, that we tell others and that we tell ourselves. And that script is the all-supremacy of Christ. Jesus is first in my heart.

I love him um he's he's the priority of my heart. I love him more than anything in the world, more than even my family, more than myself. I think people are saying that because they want to believe that. I think they're saying it'cause they think they should believe that. Mm-hmm. And I think they're saying it even though in many cases they don't believe it. The evidence is to the contrary. I think the evidence is to the contrary.

I don't think it's people saying one thing, you know, uh on on Sunday night or Sunday afternoon or Sunday morning, and then going out on Tuesday and living in contradiction to it. I think it's it's it's a sense that what I think I read in the scripture and and the centrality of faith in my life, how animating it is. That's what they read, and particularly if you're in the solo scriptura tradition, you're thinking, well, this is how it should be.

Um and as I say, I I think there's a sense in which if I say this to others, maybe I'll begin to believe it in myself. I think in reality that was a much weaker hold on people's hearts. that the core identity that we think as Christians i is Jesus and it's Christianity. So actually our core identity is a lot of other stuff too.

And it's complicated. It's attachment theory, it's family of origin, it's the people that I'm around, it's the schools I went to, it's all of these shaping influences, it's my own predilections, my own psychological makeup. that creates who I am. And I think in a lot of cases what we end up doing is Christianity is an add on. Russell Moore's used used the phrase hood ornament. Um But I think Christians

Precisely'cause they don't want to be cynical and they don't think they're being cynical. They're tagging on Christianity and it's validating some of these cultural or political predispositions. And so they're saying, well, this is the proper um approach to have if you're a faithful if you if you're a faithful Christian. So I think that happened what what the result of that is that some pretty pernicious

political and cultural movements filled a void because there was an opening. So it didn't even displace necessarily Jesus. It went in where people thought that faith existed. I totally agree. I I was a pastor here in Wheaton for some years and um I remember after a sermon I preached there was an older gentleman. He was probably my age now, but at the time I was young.

And it was a it was a message about identity and and the things we put our identity in other than Christ. And he came up to me, he was pretty irritated and and disturbed with me at the time. And we had a conversation after the message. And I knew he had young adult children and I h my message just wasn't getting through to him. So finally I said to him, Look, is it is it more important for you that your children grow up to vote Republican or that they grow up to follow Jesus?

And he was not being cynical, he was being utterly sincere and he said to me, What's the difference? Yeah. He couldn't tell the difference between the two. So I agree with you. I think for a lot of people, um These things have been so...

seared together in their community that they go together. And as the Republican Party went further and further down the MAGA trail, they just thought this is what a Christian does. And I think at least in conversations I've had, both with church leaders and members, A number of them have woken up to the reality that this is not good. Right.

But what keeps them from speaking up or what keeps them in line is the group acceptance. Yeah. I just this morning I was talking to a group in Chicago and I use this. quote from Jonathan Haidt in his book The Righteous Mind, he said, We are groupish creatures. We want to belong and we will often do almost anything to maintain our standing within our group. Yeah. That's a powerful force that keeps people either quiet Or

We're just going along to get along. Yeah. And that's partly what got us into this mess. No, I think that's I think it's right. And I I love John Hyde and and and his his insights on any number of issues are are uh are terrific. So I I I definitely think that that is a factor. I also think uh a factor um for a lot of pastors I'm interested in if you've had these conversations and heard from them too.

I is a series of things, right? One is, look, I didn't get into the ministry to preach politics. I've never really done it my entire life. and I don't feel particularly uh called to do it and I don't think that I have any particular gift to offer in the analysis of politics. So that's one thing. The second thing is in this hyperpolarized time

I can say even something relatively anodyne, and it will be heard by some number of people in the congregation as fighting words. Yeah. It this is too, too, too woke. I've Uh I have a good friend who's a pastor who said, I I don't know if I could really preach on Micah six eight um without it being heard as woke or the Sermon on the Mount. People have talked about uh about about that. Oh, this is code language.

for for for uh for woke pastors. And so pastors are out there and they're thinking, look, uh if if I say something that may be interpreted as remotely political on Sunday, February tenth, Then when I preach on Philippians 2 on Sunday, February 17th, some large number of the congregation is going to turn tune me out. And they're going to tune me out on the thing that I would most feel called in life to do, which is to preach.

the gospel re to e expouse on on on the Bible. And as you probably know as a as a pastor, it doesn't take a congregation to be split fifty fifty to great problems. Right. It takes about five highly active people within a congregation who are gonna create a lot of problems for a pastor. All of these things are are are signaling to pastors, don't say anything, don't divide your congregation, stay out of politics. I understand that. I'm sympathetic to it.

And I've even had conversations with friends of mine who are pastors where I was just if anything sort of tapping the break. about be careful about what you say. I'm I'm not in favor of suicide runs for ministers. I you say something political. I'm certainly not for partisanship or screw But the other thing I've said to to uh ministers and other church leaders is there is a problem. And that problem is that you have over eighty percent of the white evangelical movement voting for Trump.

The more regular a churchgoer you are, the more inclined you are to have voted for Trump. you're getting almost no people willing to say, look, I agree with his Supreme Court appointments, but I disagree with when he celebrates the murder of Robert Muller or Rob Reiner. That is, they're not giving anything, they're not saying anything critical. Mm-hmm. And you have a lot of high-profile figures, Eric Metaxis and Franklin Graham, and Robert Jeffries and uh Mike Huckabee, and you go through it.

saying th essentially what this pastor said to you, republicanism, MAGA, and Christianity are synonymous. We are speaking out defending Donald Trump and the MAGA movement and everything that he does. And you have a lot of people who are really uncomfortable with what's being said and done who aren't saying anything. Right. So the playing field is a little bit skewed. And what's the effect of that to a watching world is, okay, so that's it. These people vote for them.

Their religious leaders speak out on behalf of him. They won't challenge him. And I'm really not hearing any contrary voices. I mean, there's Pete Wayner and David French and Russell Moore, none of whom are ministers. So this

I got it. Donald Trump and the MAGA movement is the personification of what you want. Now you'll sometimes hear from from MAG people who say, Well look, this is a binary choice, uh it's a liberal against a conservative, it's it's it's Trump against Hillary Clinton or Trump against Kamala Harris or Joe Biden.

So of course you're gonna vote because you feel like he represents even if imperfectly the values of the movement. There's one s slightly problematic uh counter argument to that, and you saw it in twenty twenty-four and you saw it in twenty sixteen. In 2024, you had a primary.

You had Nikki Haley, who was, if anything, more conservative, traditionally conservative than Trump, successful former governor of South Carolina, articulate, and at the time did much better in the polling against Biden than Trump did. And she had none of the ethical or moral baggage, no indictments, uh no no uh findings of sexual assault, uh no insurrections that she championed.

And there were some people I heard, well, maybe J hi Nikki Haley will give him a run for his money. I said, Are you out of your mind? Th this man is a near cult figure for some of them. and she won't stand a chance. And she didn't and she was crushed. So here was a chance in which, if in fact, white evangelicals felt like Donald Trump

is not the personification and you're not forcing us to vote for a liberal. Here's Nikki Haley and she doesn't even register. He is the personification of what they want. And the world is watching this and they're saying, Thank you very much. Now you've revealed what in your heart of hearts you're looking for. And he is it, and I want nothing to do with And and just really quickly, that's I think the challenge for ministers to say

Jesus' name is being defamed. And w it would be helpful if there were some people Who stood up and said that isn't us? This is not the Jesus ethic. It's not to quote Eugene Peterson. This is not the Jesus way. Yeah, I uh amen. I could not agree more. I also sympathize with pastors and church leaders who are in a really tough spot. But part of the reason they are in this tough spot is because too many of them were too silent. for too long, right.

And more silence is not the way out. Yeah. So one of the things that frustrates me. I I understand with our popular ecclesiology and a lot of evangelical churches, the congregation can turn around and fire people whenever they want. You're right, it only takes a handful of really vocal opponents to make a pastor's life totally miserable. I didn't become a pastor. To entertain a group of people.

I think one of the l lost virtues that we need to recapture for those called to ministry is the importance of courage. And the the reality that you may stand in front of a congregation every Sunday. And they may turn around and want to chop your head off for what you do, but Eventually you're gonna be standing before an audience of one. Yeah. And what are you gonna say? Right. Right.

It was too political. Right. I agree. I don't think pastors should be preaching about politics and certainly not partisanship, but we are called to preach about loving our neighbor. And part of being a follower and disciple of Jesus in the twenty first century is in a country like the United States is also discipling people in their civic responsibilities.

We have the right to vote, we have freedom of speech, we have the right to assembly, we have all these things that other Christians in prior generations didn't have. And at least a lot of white evangelical churches, I would argue, are doing virtually nothing.

to form and disciple people in those responsibilities as followers of Jesus. I think black churches do it much better. Some other churches do it much better. Some other traditions do it better. But we've inherited this idea that if anything is public or Remotely political. Well then it's it's off the table. Right.

Well what do you do when more and more things are called I mean, we went through a season where the NFL was politics. Right. What do I take a knee or not? Right. So if everything suddenly becomes political, then you're removing one topic after another the church isn't allowed to talk about. Yeah. That seems Pretty contrary to the gospel to me.

So I that's the I think the courage part is where uh uh some people, yes, you're gonna lose your job. Yeah. You are gonna have chaos in some of your churches, but What's the alternative to just be silent and allow this to continue to destroy people's lives and now even globally?

Yeah, and this is a conversation that I've had with pastors, you've had with pastors, and pastors are having with themselves. And I and I wrote an essay in the Atlantic in which I posed Uh two pastors um I said something to the effect of I think increasingly for the next three years, uh pastors should begin to ask themselves this question, is there any line that Donald Trump can cross, any conceivable line that he can cross, in which you would feel like you would be compelled to

to speak out. We know that creating an insurrection is not one of them. Um I there's some other lines it can be crossed, but we're running out of we're running out of lines in which to do that. I would say courage for sure, and that's one of the one of the the the the the great virtues, uh, you d you need to conjoin that to discernment. Yeah. Right. You need to have an understanding of your relationship with the congregation, the nature of the congregation.

Costs and benefits, how effective is it is it going to be? I very much agree with you. I think this is a decades long problem, which is a lot of the training, the shaping of sensibilities wasn't going on. And you're not going to fix it.

in a day or a week or a month or a year. So this is a long term problem. But the but the issue in the here and now is is is what a pastors do and and say. And in my experience, it's facts and circumstances. Tell me about you and your congregation and where you are and let's let's talk this through. I will

Give you an example which um which I think bears on this on this point, uh which I've we've used with friends of mine in the in the ministry, which is Let's assume that you're looking back at a pastor, white pastor of a uh church, a conservative evangelical church in Alabama in 1965. And it's in the aftermath a bloody Sunday. We look back, and and this is true of most of the ministers that I I know, we say, look.

Would you look back at that minister in that context at that time and say, if he spoke out in a way that challenged the segregationists in his congregation? Um, uh that he's he he named one degree or another what happened on on on Bloody Sunday and what was the right side to be on, the right biblical and ethical side of this struggle.

And most of them would say, Yeah, that's a person I I hope I would do the same thing. Right. And that's a person I look back to as a model. And it's true of Martin Luther King Junior. It's true of Wilberforce, it's true of Bonhoeffer. It you know, you can go through these moments, key moments, moral moments in the history of the church, and we usually look back at them And say, gosh, I'm glad somebody stood up and spoke truth to power and took up the prophetic calling.

Seriously. And I remember telling a good friend of mine, you know what would be nice? It'd be nice if more Christians did that in real time rather than sixty or seventy years after the event. and say, Oh yeah, that was the right, you know, the right thing to do. I don't pretend that there's there's a game plan or a book you can pull off the shelf that says this is when you do it. And as I said, I I don't believe in suicide runs for pastors. I don't want a pastor who is really shaping souls.

and um and entering into the lives of their congregants through through times of grief and sorrow and loss and joy. you know, to say something um just'cause he's getting it off his chest and and that divides a congregation. So You have to figure it out, is this something that maybe isn't done from the pulpit? Is there some do you have a congregational meeting?

Yeah, I get it. I I mean there's no one size fits all thing. Just like in parenting or marriage advice, whatever, everyone's context is unique. I I I think I mean, Martin Luther King Jr., when he was killed in nineteen sixty eight, was one of the most despised men in America. He was not popular. No. And now we have a national holiday and he's got a monument on the mall, right? So in the moment, it's never the right time.

Exactly. So I I and I agree. I don't want pastors on suicide runs just saying, I'm gonna go to the pulpit this Sunday and blow up the whole congregation. Um There are wiser ways to do it and foolish ways to do it. But I I I've heard from so many over the last ten years. That aren't wrestling enough. I agree with that. Right.

They're just hoping this will pass. Yes. And they got their head in the sand. Uh huh. And that's what I if a pastor is genuinely struggling and trying to discern how do I do this? How am I faithful? Anyway. I'm Wonderful. Let's I'd be happy to come alongside and talk with you through that or whatever it might be. But I think too many are just passing on this. Or in worse case, they are actually.

Endorsing this whole thing because it's easier to go get along that way. And I think that's what caused the. problem. I I agree. And just one other thing, this is not a major issue, but I do think it's worth mentioning. Because I've heard this from bastards but that I know and also you just read about it, you know, m more generally, which is look, we don't do politics in the church. We've never done politics in the church. And if they mean by that that they're they're not

preaching every Sunday about who to vote for or politicizing their churches. That's true in in my experience. On the other hand, I've been in plenty of churches that have talked ab about abortion and championed uh r the right to life march. and w to have talked about transgenderism, uh the PCA, uh Presbyterian Church of America, uh has had uh wig in legislatively with letters to uh

the President Biden at the time, the Chief Justice, leaders of the House and Senate on trans surgery for kids. I think they're right on the issue and I'm against that. Aaron Powell But my point is don't pretend you're a virgin on this. What you are saying is we we actually do weigh in on politics. What we do is we weigh in on politics when ninety-seven plus percent of the congregation agrees with us. Which means you're not the shepherd, you're the sheep.

Exactly. And to say, yes, I'm going to weigh in on transgender surgery, which is a problem, certainly you can make the case for that. And I said I'm sympathetic to that point of view in terms of being concerned about it, especially for for kids below a certain age, but that's a fraction of the population. And if you're dealing with a president who, in the w words of a friend of mine, Jonathan Rausch, so very fair minded He's been on the show with

Yeah, John is great. And he wrote a recent essay in The Atlantic where he went through comprehensively to make the case that Donald Trump is a fascist. And John was late to coming to that for a variety of reasons. I think his his case is strong to the point of being overwhelming. And so I do think that uh if that is correct, or some version of that is correct.

uh then more pastors sh than is currently the case need to wrestle with the question, what do I do and say in this moment? What is being called uh on me as a faithful follower of Jesus? I have uh we gotta wrap up in a minute here, but I have been in rooms. with white evangelical leaders. who have no problem putting their name on a piece of paper for the sanctity of life before birth. I hypothetically could imagine they would have no problem putting their name on a paper arguing against

sex reassignment surgeries for minors. Right. I was in the room when these same leaders refused to put their name on a piece of paper saying that Hispanic immigrants who are undocumented deserve equal human dignity and rights. Yeah. It's not because they don't believe it. They do believe it. They just don't want to put their name on it because of the political implications of saying that. All of those topics you could say are

equally rooted in our Christian convictions. But they won't speak up about some of them because they don't code red politically. And that's where I I get Frustrated with the lack of courage because what it tells me is you're taking your cues from your people and their political idolatry rather than your commitment. Yeah, no, I I agree. And just one footnote note to that, which is the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution nineteen ninety eight.

which was aimed at Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal, and it was a resolution having to do with the absolute centrality of character in presidents and political leaders. And and they were talking about, excuse me, and they were talking about that issue. It seemed like every other day, people like Al Moeller and others.

Now you're fast forward to twenty twenty six, you have a leader who in many respects, not all respects, but many respects makes Bill Clinton look like a Boy Scout. And all of a sudden those moral concerns have either subsided or disappeared all altogether.

And so people look at that and they say, uh, oh, I see what's going on here. This is just a cynical game. It's a power play. Uh you guys pretend you care about these issues. You you you you you talk about Jesus like the ethic of Jesus matters to you. Um, but you know what? When it comes to people uh uh, you know, uh sexual assault victims and and and and and and the poor and the dispossessed and the people that Jesus seemed to identify with most in his ministry.

when they're the subjects of of injustice. uh, you know, all of a sudden we're check we're checking we're checking out. Now that you can do that as a debating point. I do think this returns to what we were talking about earlier, which is I think this has to do with the cultivation of the sensibilities and the affections of the heart. And what what has been lost in a lot of cases and what we need to f find again is how to fall more in love with Jesus, the person of Jesus.

And I think if we can do that, and that's its own show and it's a complicated issue. But if we can do that, then I think then it can begin to displace. Some of these more malignant um movements, political, cultural and otherwise, that uh that now define much of of the white evangelical world. Thanks. It was a pleasure. Great to be here in person.

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