September 27, 2024 • 50 mins
Molly Conger sits down with Talia Lavin to talk about her new book, Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America. Pre-order Wild Faith now, available in hardcover, audiobook, and e-book October 15.
Pre- order: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/talia-lavin/wild-faith/9780306829192/
Talia's Newsletter: https://buttondown.com/theswordandthesandwich
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome back to it could happen here in
your daily dose of the horrors that are, in fact,
already happening all around us. I'm your occasional host, Molly Conger,
and I am delighted to be joined today by the
critically acclaimed author of Culture Warlords, journalist researcher, sword enthusiast,
Sandwich expert, and my friend Talia Lavin. Hello.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (00:26):
I once introduced myself at an event as a Sandwich historian,
which I think was the pinnacle of my public speaking career.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
But this is a second pinnacle. Hey, Molly, what's up?
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Thank you so much for coming on today to talk
with me about your new book, Wild Faith is coming
out in just a few weeks October fifteenth, right.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
Yeah, Wild Faith, How the Christian Right is taking over America.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Not the terrible B movie entitled Wild Faith.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yeah, the SEO is scrambled on that one. But the book, however,
is very good. I mean, first of all, I just
want to say, like I've been reading the gally copy
that you sent me, which I honestly made me feel
very fancy. I've never received a galley copy of a
book that's not out yet before. So I felt, you know,
kind of a kind of a broadcasting professional with my
special book.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
It's an exclusive club. You're one of like five people
thus read it.
Speaker 5 (01:18):
Oh my god, that is that's very exclusive.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
Well it's about to become a lot less exclusive, so
feel special while you can, right.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
But I realized while I was reading it, you know,
I have my little sticky tabs because I'm reading a
lot more books lately, regrettably not not not a big
time book guy.
Speaker 5 (01:35):
It's always reading.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
I read a lot of court documents, but I'm reading
a lot of books right now for research for my show,
and it's like my little sticky tabs. And as in
reading it, I realize I'm not marking passages that I
think would be useful for us to talk about in
this interview. I'm just putting my little tabs on passages
that just like punched me in the gut.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
You know, Ah, sorry for punching you.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
No, but I mean, I mean with the way the
power of your words, because like a lot of what
I'm reading sucks. It's just right, Like I spent all
day yesterday reading like twenty five year old Issues of Resistance,
which was the quarterly magazine for a white power music label.
So this, I mean it's a real departure, So you know,
(02:21):
really just reveling in the richness of the pros and
the fact that it, you know, didn't want to kill me.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
No, I also have experienced neo Nazi research fatigue, and
also just like the sort of relentless grimness of allowing
through these like fundamentally hostile texts, and also like academic texts,
which are difficult in their own way. I try to
write accessively or just like excitingly. I find that a
(02:50):
lot of especially nonfiction sort of journalism me books tend
to be a little dry, and I'm like, let's not
be dry. Let's be like spicy, and you know, like
form and function, Like you're more likely to be moved
by a message if you find the writing compelling.
Speaker 5 (03:10):
You know, it's just you have such a way with words.
I mean, you know this.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
You're a professional writer. I don't want to embarrass you
on the show.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
So I'm twirling my air like yes, but I do
write for a living.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
If you'll indulge me, if it's legal, if the publisher
will allow this, I just want to read this passage
from the introduction that I think is a good jumping
off point, and it was one of the first things
I marked because I was just like, oh, hell yeah, we're.
Speaker 5 (03:34):
Getting into this. There's good words in here, okay.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
The Christian Right is a force in American politics and
has been for decades, half a century to be precise,
during which it has steadily gained power. It started in
school rooms, continued in courtrooms, and perseveres with the aid
of people who are perfectly willing to call in bomb
threats to hospitals and attempt to overturn elections. It features
self proclaimed profits with a distinct interest in policy, newly
(04:01):
minted apostles with very definite ideas about spiritual battle and
its earthly components, and pastors eager to usher in the
end of the world. Its adherents have hymns and devotionals
and speaking tongues on occasion, and the showiest among them
are known to march their cities, blowing rams horns in
an effort to topple, as Joshua once did, the wicked
cities of the world. They have their own insular world,
(04:22):
their own media apparatus. They have legislators who could fire
in brimstone speeches from the badly carpeted rooms where laws
are made. They have lawyers too, and in case the
lawyers fail, there's always the promise of congregations that might
coalesce into mobs or arsonists. Who's burning holy zeal coalesces
into the tiny pinpoint of a molotop cocktail. And I
(04:47):
knew from the intro that we were in for a ride.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
Yeah, it's like cast of characters, the worst people ever,
but like, let's write about it.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
In an exciting way. I think that one of.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
The themes of the book is really how these extra
legal extremist movements like the anti abortion terror movement, and
the legal framework of a movement work together. I actually
initially heard about this from a friend who was talking
about how like during the gay rights movement you had
(05:22):
sort of the act up builth demonstrations, the diets, and
then you have the sort of like more respectively coded
like gay people who you know, we're talking to the
government and trying to get elected and you know, really
trying to influence research, and that every movement needs sort
of a radical outside and then a respectable inside. And
I'm like, oh, this works in like the acratic movements too,
(05:46):
where you have like this you know, fringe that's burning
down clinics, and then people steadily working for fifty years
to like ban abortion, and they have the same DNA
and they have the same goals. They just go about
it differently but complement each other. And I think that's
like a running theme in the book, is that, like
(06:07):
you have lawyers and you have legislators, and then you
have mobs, and they're sort of all working towards the
same goals. And that's really what we're seeing, I think,
on the Christian Right after decades of building power.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Yeah, one of the notes that I wrote down in
that vein while I was reading was that, you know,
the Christian Right drives its power across a spectrum, right
from the clinic bomber to the senator. But it's not
you know, you might say two sides of the same coin.
But to me, it looks like this isn't two different
spheres of power too sort of separate but coexisting or
comorbid ideologies. They're just different numbers on the same dial, right,
(06:46):
it's turning up and turning down.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
Yeah, it's like the hand that lights the torch and
the hand that puts it to the you know, pyre.
They perform different functions that they have really the same goals.
And if like me, you view stripping half the populace
of its bodily autonomy, imposing a theocracy, hounding queer people
(07:12):
out of public life, slash into death as fundamentally violent goals. Yeah,
I don't think there's like a respectable iteration necessarily, there's
just cosplaying respectability and right.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
You can say it with a tie on on the
Senate floor, but it's it's the same message.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Yeah, And I think so much of our media apparatus
and governmental apparatus is really sort of views like again
this like form and function, right, Like if you are
if you say something politely, it doesn't really matter what
you're saying, like if you say something with a suit
(07:53):
on in the register of like, you know, in a
calm sort of Mike Pencian, rush Limbaugh and decap As.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
He called himself a boy.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
She says, did he say that, Yeah, that's what he
called himself when he read it, did a like evangelical
radio show.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
No, no matter what you say, as long as you
are like white and you say it politely, like this is.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Fundamentally sort of fine.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
And then if you look at it from you know,
a step or two back, and you're like, no, actually,
no matter how politely say it, this is like a violent,
deeply unpopular theocratic agenda that like fundamentally is incompatible with
multiracial democracy. I also think, and I keep running into this,
(08:37):
like well meaning liberals being like, but isn't there a
separation of church and state?
Speaker 3 (08:41):
And I'm like, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
Do you fucking think there is? In Alabama? Do you
think there is an Arkansas? And all of these you
know in Texas, Like all of these figures are like,
we're Christians.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
We're making laws for Jesus, and.
Speaker 5 (08:55):
We have covenant marriages and we want you to too.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
Yeah, like we're gonna outlage because of God, and like,
you know, women dying of sepsis in hospital parking lots
is what Jesus wants. And like, and I experienced this,
I think you probably have to when you like report
on you know, zealots and extremists, and people inevitably wind
(09:18):
up like measuring other people's weep by their own bushel.
In other words, they are like they can't really believe
this stuff, and it's like, no, they really do, they
can't really have these goals.
Speaker 5 (09:30):
First of all, they do, but also doesn't.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
Matter, right, I mean the question of like impact versus intent.
First of all, it's I think it's perfectly possible to
be both a grifter and a true believer at the
same time.
Speaker 5 (09:42):
That's just synergy baby.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
And also fundamentally, this is a world premise done grievance,
where it's this idea that like, the world has got
one over on you. And so in a sense, grift
is just like, well, you know, the world's corrupt and
I'm fighting a righteous cause, so what does it matter
the ethics that I sort of skip on along the way.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
I mean, once you've amped the stakes up to you're
fighting the literal devil and everyone who's getting in my
way is animated by actual demons from Hell.
Speaker 5 (10:15):
I mean, the stakes couldn't be higher. So you do
what you have to.
Speaker 4 (10:18):
Do exactly, and it's this theory of power. And so
then people sort of standing outside of that paradigm who
are not keyed into this idea of like we're in
an ethical spiritual battle and we must create like a
Kingdom of Christ on earth in America to win against
the devil, and then people outside being like, you're hypocrites,
(10:39):
and it's like it's not a valid criticism to them
because they're like, first of all, you're not like a
Christian if you're a liberal, but also like you're not
on our level, Like we're fighting Lucifer and you're probably
a stand like on his team if you oppose us. So,
you know, a multitude of apparent hypocrisies can be excused
(11:01):
by the idea that like this is a holy war
and in war there's like all kinds of avert behavior.
Speaker 5 (11:09):
That's they're doing holy war crimes.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (11:13):
I mean this is why, for example, you see a
lot of like prominent female figures from Philish Slafley, you know,
in the seventies and eighties, to like the trad wives now,
and it's like, how does this fit in with your
overall sort of idea that women should be chaste and
submissive and meek and silent. I mean, first of all,
tradwife stuff is often fetish Spanish content.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
But yeah, I mean Pilish Laffy made a living professionally
saying that women shouldn't make a living professionally, but that
contradiction doesn't matter.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
Yeah, I mean I think I call them valkyries for
feminine submission in the book. Yeah, I mean, at the
end of the day, like if you believe that this
is your your calling, your mission, you know, your mission
field in the service of the Lord to undo the
demonic sort of influence of feminism, Like of course you're
going to.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Speak, You've been moved by God to do so.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
And of course, like female leaders with the evangelical community,
like sort of minority Republicans can be like knocked off
their pedestal quicker and easier, but like they.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Still can come out and exist and testify.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
And Schlaughley throughout her very long prolific and lucrative career,
you know, was like I'm a housewife with six kids,
and that was her. That was how she defined herself,
even while being this incredibly prominent figure and one of
the sort of key architects of the current Christian right
coalition of like right wing Catholics. She and Paul we
(12:45):
Wairik and Leonard Leo and some other right wing Catholics
brought these Catholic values of being all about abortion to
the evangelical right, which prior to the seventies is like,
that's a weird Catholic thing.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
You don't really I.
Speaker 5 (13:00):
Wanted to talk about that.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
So I'm not sure how sort of common knowledge this is,
but the Protestant Christian community in the United States did
not care about abortion until the seventies. It was not
an issue in their communities. They were generally pro abortion.
They were you know, the Baptists were in favor of
Roe V.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
Wade.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
Yeah, the fucking Southern Baptist Convention came out in like
seventy four I think it was, and was like, yeah,
we approve of rov Wade.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
So it's not like, you know, opposition to abortion is
baked into Christianity. It is baked into the American Evangelical
Christianity of post nineteen seventy five or so because of
this sort of conscious cynical political decision. And that I
think is so interesting because you know, you get into
this conversation of well, what are their deeply held beliefs
(13:49):
and do they really believe it and does that matter?
But we can pin down the moment they started believing
this and we know why, and it's segregation.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
I mean, first of all, I would say, like people
can still like this is like several generations later of
like constant barrages of extremely violent propaganda against abortions.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
So right, so the belief is sincere today, but you
could look at it where it was born.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Yeah, exactly, you should have been aborted, right, yeah, no,
it definitely should not have been carried to term. But
like it's it's crazy. And in addition to Mooi's book,
Randall Baumer does some really good coverage of this. So
the sort of general arc is like three sort of
nineteen seventies, you had this like generally conservative population of
(14:41):
Southern Baptists who were like on board with McCarthyism, hated
the godless Reds, but kind of viewed politics as like
worldly and not really their sphere, and we're not particularly
politically engaged. And then brown versus a board of education
passes immediately, the white Christian populist just disinvests these from
(15:05):
the public schools, leaving multiple counties in the South without
functionally any public education at all. And this mushroom after rain,
kind of like patch of patches of parochial schools with
church or Christian in the name start popping up, and
they're all white schools their segregation academies is the sort
(15:28):
of term of art for these and they're explicitly under
a Christian agis they're religious schools.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
They're tax exempt as a result.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
And then in like the late sixties and seventies, the
government was like, you can't be tax exempt and like
considered a charitable organization if you are segregated and don't
have any black.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Students or minority students.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
And that is what woke the sleeping dragon of the
Christian right really like, you know, get your filthy government
hands off our tax exemptions. Like they just went, you
know nuts. They were really mobilized, you know, like these
are the people who are like growing tomatoes at Ruby Bridges, Like,
you know, they're really politically motivated for the first time
(16:17):
because they're experiencing like a consequence for segregation.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
And so this is when like Jerry Fowell.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
And Ralph Reid and you know, James Dobson start sort
of coming forward and being more prominent. And then by
the sort of mid seventies to eighties, you had these
like savvy or political operators coming out and saying, hey, guys,
segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever is like, it's great
(16:48):
that it really fired y'all up, but it has sort
of a limited appeal.
Speaker 5 (16:54):
And they shot George Wallace. It's over.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
Yeah, Like there's going to be a sailing on that,
and a lot of people think you suck. So why
are you getting on the ground on this new civil
rights struggle abortion where you can fight for the unborn
who conveniently will never disagree with you.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Right, their voices don't have to be centered here. We
can speak for them.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
I mean, they're the most convenient political constituency in history.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Right because they're so innocent and you can't milkshake duck
a fetus.
Speaker 5 (17:23):
He's not even here.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
Yeah, he can't talk, but he's not gonna say shit.
So I mean that's like the very capsule history. And
then of course it becomes this idea of like the
(17:44):
moral majority and where the guardians of America's soul and
we're gonna get really weird about sex.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Also, it's just.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Like if you strip it all the way down to
the studs, Like the core of this is women are
bleeding to death in hospital parking lots because Gary Fowell
didn't want to pay his taxes or stop being racist.
Speaker 5 (18:04):
Yeah, I mean that's not fair.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
No, people sometimes like are a little skeptical when I'm like,
all of the hatreds are interconnected. But then you look
at like concrete historical examples of like this world historical
wave of misogyny. I mean, it's not that this population
wasn't like weird about sex or weird about women like.
Speaker 5 (18:26):
To start with.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
I mean maybe they would have gotten here a different way,
but that's how we got here.
Speaker 4 (18:30):
Yeah, we got here by just like no, we will
pay taxes on our segregation academies. Bob Jones University's inter
racial dating ban is perfectly great, and we're gonna mobilize
about it. And so what you have then now is
just like fifty years of political lock staff because and
(18:52):
you see this.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
In like other religious communities. I mean, like I know, like.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
It's sort of notorious how much corruption slides by in
New York because like the that a communities vote as
a block, like it is very useful to have a
congregation that all votes the same way.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
It's politically useful.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
I mean, what other populations can you get together once
a week as a captive audience and speak to with
authority if you can mobilize those people. And that's what
Jerry Folwell saw, right, is like this is a great
way to get a lot of people to vote the
way I want them to vote.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
Yeah, And you know, the church has always been like
a really prominent institution in American civil society, especially as
the rest of sort of civil society has fallen away
and degraded. Like churches are some of the only social
outlets that Americans have. And what's interesting when you talk
to evangelicals and next evangelicals is just like being a
(19:47):
Republican is like part of their religious identity in a
major way. It's like this is how you vote, and
this is you know, how you dress, and this is
how you go to church and so on. But like
the idea of being a Democrat is like not only
you know, a little bit out of step with your community,
it's heretical.
Speaker 5 (20:06):
I mean, that's how the demons get in.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
Yeah, yeah, demoncrats, I mean, and like, yeah, it's stupid.
But it's also like half of the people saying demoncrats
like literally mean democrats are aligned with Lucifer.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
And I think that's a point that I don't want
to get lost on the listener. This you know, this
idea that people literally have demons in them, that demons
are active in the world, that demons are motivating the
actions of their enemies.
Speaker 5 (20:30):
It is real for them.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
And I'm not saying that to be derisive or you know,
it's real.
Speaker 5 (20:36):
It's real.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
It is an animating factor for a lot of these people.
And that's hard to wrap your mind around. I mean,
I struggle with the idea that that is real for them.
But like that's how you get things like satanic panic,
and we see echoes of satanic panic in this idea
of you know, groomers in kids' schools. They really have
this fundamental, like foundational belief in this, you know, whether
(20:59):
or not they're calling it demons, that the existence of
some sort of ontological evil that is coming for their children.
And like once you arrive at the place where, like
where you understand that that's real for them, their actions
make more sense. Like they're not behaving irrationally if you
if you truly believe that these things were happening, you'd
act crazy too.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
Yeah, I mean it's really hard to get people to
step outside their own worldviews and in both directions, right, Like,
I don't believe that demons are, you know, abroad in
the world and motivating like every element of political action
to someone who.
Speaker 5 (21:33):
I'm starting to see them some places, but generally no.
Speaker 4 (21:37):
To someone who does my viewpoint is incomprehensible and vice versa.
So I think part of I mean not that I'm
like one of those people that's like polarization is the
big problem, like you know, as opposed to anything with
like concrete policy, like you know where it's like, the
big problem is we all don't like each other enough.
And I'm like, no, the big problem is like people
(21:58):
are espousing policies that will cause deaths, and like also
that people like believe their political enemies are like literally
agents of Satan. I would say, is like a bigger
problem than polarization in the abstract. But yeah, I mean
this this doctrine of sort of spiritual warfare, which if
you like google it, it's just like, oh, this is
the mindset and it's like you, the listener to it
(22:19):
could happen here, like you've been drafted into the spirit
war from like birth.
Speaker 5 (22:23):
Congratulations, private, and.
Speaker 4 (22:26):
You're probably in the side of the devil, so good job.
I mean, I don't know, like a lot of Americans
believe in angels and demons, and that's fine, but it's
like when that starts impinging on the political sphere in
a very serious way, It's like, how far would you
go if you believed your opponent was under the thrall
(22:46):
of like Satan, you would go pretty damn far's.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
I mean, that's why you know clinic bombings were and
I guess are on the rise again, right, Like these
arsens of clinics. It's not like other kinds of crime
in my mind, right, It's not a crime of passion
or an interpersonal dispute. It is people who have been
motivated by this belief that this is a place where
a genocide is happening, that there's a holocaust going on
(23:10):
in there, that people are ripping you know, actual living
babies limb from limb, and if you really did believe that,
their actions make sense. And that's why it happens so often, right,
because these people are motivated by this belief that God
commands them to take this action.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
Yeah, I mean there's your dual element to that. I mean,
first of all, absolutely, yes, Like I've read some anti
abortion terror manuals speaking of extremely unpleasant research, and it's
just really like these people are murderers. It's mass murderers,
Like you're like killing Hitler, right.
Speaker 5 (23:41):
And wouldn't you wouldn't you kill baby Hitler exactly?
Speaker 4 (23:44):
But poltical about baby Hitler in like a countrywide scale.
And when specific abortion doctors have been mentioned in right
wing media, those guys end up dead and that's not
a coincidence. So there's that element of it, which is
the majority of it.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
It's huge.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
But there's also this idea of demonic geography, where like
demons can possess sort of places like abortion clinics or
institutions like planned parenthood or even the Democratic Party, which
you know, I read a lot of demonology books like
Taxonomies of Demons. Pigs in the Parlor was this really
(24:23):
big hit in like the seventies, and it's been like
reissued and reissued and millions of copies, and it's just like,
on one level, it's really compelling because it's like are
you tired, are you sad? Are you feeling clumsy? Do
you have like persistent stomach aches? It's demons and here's
how you deal with that. And like, in a country
with shitty healthcare, I can totally see why someone who's
(24:46):
like really depressed might go to like an exorcist or
a deliverance minister, which is the Protestant.
Speaker 5 (24:53):
If you'll try anything, and this guy's going to do
it for free.
Speaker 4 (24:56):
I watched so many videos of deliverance ministers doing their thing,
and it's like crazy. It's like people, you know, are
just like sitting there and they're like people praying over
them and screaming in their face, like and they wind
up vomiting and crying and it's all very like intense.
And you know, if you think about it from a
placebo effect perspective for like one second, you're like, obviously
(25:18):
this person would feel a weightlifted from them they've had
this ecstatic experience.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
And this isn't the majority of it.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
This is about fourteen percent of America identifies this as
white evangelics, so many Protestants and still so many people
because people keep asking me, like how many people really
believe shit like this, and I'm like, well, about eighty
to ninety percent of like people who identify as white
Evangelical Protestants espows most of these beliefs.
Speaker 5 (25:46):
So that's like third, that's like thirty million people.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Yeah, yeah, And then you add in the Catholic.
Speaker 5 (25:51):
Right, which is getting weirder every day.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
Yeah, Jdvans, I hate women exist to reproduce breede you
filthy now. But like even beyond the adult Catholic convert
style weirdness, like right wing Catholics are an integral part
of the Christian right, like Amy Cony Barrett, you know
antonin Scalia, that kind of thing. That's another bunch of millions.
(26:17):
So this reactionary force has like numerically significant constituency. On
the other hand, it definitely punches way above its weight
in terms of right.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
They have an outsized influence of both you know, on
the legislative floor and when it comes to you know,
who's racking up the most bodies.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
Yeah, And also even like the culture wars right, like
the sort of loudest culture warriors tend to at least
come from like a background of I'm speaking for God
or Christ is king or whatever it is, Like how
many times have you and I encountered that an extremist
contacts But also like the sort of more mainstream me,
(26:59):
what the fuck the mainstream is? I don't know, it's
full of piss, But like the more mainstream, like Christian grifter, Right,
they come from this. I'm speaking from my faith. These
are my religious principles. But like it is worth noting
again just to rewind in our conversation. But like the
full concept of religious liberty and religious freedom absolutely was
(27:21):
like an ad slogan coined in the seventies around segregation.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Right, religious freedom to do what? I mean, it's like
states rights, states rights.
Speaker 5 (27:29):
To do what?
Speaker 4 (27:31):
Right, Yeah, like you answer the question, Yeah, it's religious
freedom to have segregated schools, is the answer to that.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
And you still see echoes of that with either still
religious schools that can't accept federal grant money because they
don't let students be gay, right, Like it's not racial
segregation anymore, but they are refusing to admit gay students,
and that is a violation of federal civil rights law.
Speaker 4 (27:56):
Yeah, but that's where I mean, that's where that slogan started.
And then it's blossomed to clue basically like a gay
person came into my shop.
Speaker 5 (28:03):
Except they didn't, right, I know, there's no standing, right,
Like that whole case was built a lie. Whatever.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
That's yeah, it's like and the standing in the Supreme
Court is so ridiculous. This I mean, in many ways,
this Supreme Court is the culmination and embodiment and of
botheosis of like Christian right theocracy, because you have these
like absolutely batshit religious zealots, I mean Amy Cony Barrett
is like from a cult, and in this unaccountable body,
(28:31):
they're passing unpopular theocratic principles that the majority of the
American public uh disagrees with. But like specifically, what they
are trying to enact and what they are what they
are enacting is this theocratic agenda where like the government
is in your bedroom, the government is in your doctor's office,
like the government is sniffing your panties, and it's it's
(28:54):
gross and it's upsetting and fundamentally, like theocracies are just
very famous all up in your junk, Like they're obsessed
with like controlling and censoring sexuality of all kinds of
a particularly female sexuality and queer sexuality, like snuff those out.
And so that's part of the reason why so many
(29:16):
abortion arguments, Like first of all, you have the like
the you're murdering this cluster of cells, which is a
full human baby, Like do you remember that article in
the Guardian A couple of years ago that like showed
the actual size of like fetuses at various stages of development,
and it was like they were just like so little,
like these little like little fingernails.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Yeah, and it doesn't look like a tiny baby doll.
That's just very small.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
Yeah, exactly, it's not like a mini baby like it
like tides of Gore. It's like literally like a tiny
cluster of cells. So the anti abortion propaganda, like, you
are not immune to propaganda. It has like wormed its
way into the popular consciousness just by virtue of its
ubiquity and constant repetition being the key to successful propaganda.
(30:03):
But so many of these arguments, in addition to this
abortion is murder stuff is also just like you should
have kept your legs closed.
Speaker 5 (30:11):
Right, This is a this is a consequence God did
this to you.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
Yeah, Like sex for your sins immortal sin, and sex
should be punished, and I.
Speaker 5 (30:19):
They must be doing it wrong.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
Like I'm like, why do you want sex to have
consequences and be punished? The like intensity of the misogyny
around purity culture is so intense.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
I wanted to ask you, you know, about the experience
of writing the book, right, so you know your first book,
Culture Warlords, is traumatizing for you to craft, right, because
you had to spend so much time in these digital
spaces in some in some cases physical spaces with you know,
neo Nazis, four Chen guys, you know, aspiring terrorists, and
so that's traumatic to experience, you know, But largely that
(31:06):
experience was alone, like at your computer screen, sort of
consuming this content that was eroding your soul. But the
second half of this book is about child abuse, right,
And like you interviewed people who grew up in this
movement about their lives, about their husband's raping them and
their parents beating them as children, and like, how did
(31:32):
those experiences compare? And like what was that? How, I mean,
how did you prepare to do that? I don't know
even know how it would begin to do that with care.
Speaker 4 (31:41):
I mean, I think my goal going in is like
I'm not going to betray you, Like that was my
guiding ethos of just like I view like your trust
in me as a sacred thing, not like sacred in
any formal religious sense, but just like you know, I
view your trust in me as something that I hold
very dearly.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
It's very important.
Speaker 4 (32:03):
I'm going to treat your pain with as much gentleness
and respect as I can. And like, I interviewed over
one hundred people largely about their experiences with experiencing child
abuse and an evangelical milieu as is laid out with
painstaking instructions and like all of these parenting manuals. Actually,
like I think reading the parenting manuals was even more
(32:25):
disturbing than talking to people, because like people were like,
this fucked me up and it was wrong. And then
these books are like, no, you must beat your toddler
because Jesus says so, and like here's exactly how to
beat your toddler, and here's what you should use to
beat your toddler, and here's the like supremely fucked up,
like weird ritual that we prescribe. And then like reading
(32:47):
those in tandem with like like the accounts of people
who were like this specific thing like sucked me up
for life and really messed up my ability to have
like intimacy or self confidence or whatever.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
All of that stuff. I mean, it was tough. I
definitely took more time, Like I wrote Culture Warlords in
nine months, so I was like totally immersed constantly.
Speaker 5 (33:07):
It just like didn't come up Forrayer.
Speaker 4 (33:09):
Yeah at all, and this one I was like, I
need a little more time, guys, Like I wrote it over,
you know, almost three years. I also pretentiously started calling
this philosophy Guarding your Heart because I really got lost
in the sauce with culture warlords, Like I was in
a dark place while I was writing it, and afterwards
I was also the like it came out in mid COVID,
(33:31):
so that didn't help either. But uh, it was a real,
really rough experience with this. I was like, I'm going
to keep writing. I'm gonna write about sandwiches all the
way through. I'm going to like make sure I have
friendships and stuff that's grounding me. And I think consciously
having that at the forefront of my mind really helped. That.
Being said, like what was really encouraging was all of
(33:53):
these people who had experienced this sort of child abuse
industrial complex in the evangelical community, where like, we really
value that someone wants to hear what we have to say,
and also that it's someone from outside the community is
like paying attention and thinks this is important, which is
not to denigrate like expangelical voices, but more to say
(34:16):
that like, I guess there's a certain validation when someone
who's like not didn't grow up in your corner of religiosity,
dark corner.
Speaker 5 (34:24):
And sort of bringing it to an outside audience too.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
I think a lot of expangelicals their audience is largely
their fellow expangelicals exactly.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
And I'm someone who, like I grew up as a Jew,
and I'm like, yeah, this sucked, this is terrible. I'm
like appalled reading like to Train Up a Child by
the Pearls or The Strong Willed Child by jam Stobson, which, like,
to be clear, the strong willed child is a bad thing.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
It's a bad thing to have a child with us.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
You have to beat it out of them, sure, literally,
And I'm going into this in the wild recently. I
don't know if you have come across this guy online.
Do you know the nineties movie The Little Rascals.
Speaker 4 (35:01):
Oh my god, alf from The Little Rascals turns out
to be Able Falfa.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
The guy who played Alfalfa's name is Bug Hall. He
like really like I don't, got into a sort of
main character situation over some posts about how he beats
his infants.
Speaker 5 (35:15):
He beats infants because that's I guess a good way
to raise a baby.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
Yeah. Also I think he's homeless.
Speaker 5 (35:23):
No, he's a surf.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Oh he's in a voluntary serfdom arrangement.
Speaker 4 (35:30):
Oh my god. Okay, well he sounds like a big rascal. Yeah,
he's continued that trajectory of rascaledom. But don't beat your kids.
I mean, I will also say the reason why this
book focuses so much on child abuse, which, like I
encountered some some haters and losers and doubters along the
(35:52):
way who were like, why are you focused so much
on child abuse? And I was like, there are a
lot of different theories about like how authoritarianism developed, but
one of the big ones is focusing on the pedagogy
in authoritarian societies, the societies that become authoritarian, you know,
evolve from democracy to authoritarianism, and beating the shit out
(36:14):
of people from when they're in infancy and particularly when
they display disobedience or ask why, or you know.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Just deviate from expectations.
Speaker 5 (36:27):
It's a great way to make an obedient brown shirt.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
Yeah, exactly, Like this is a recipe for future authoritarians.
Like the people I spoke to had sort of broken
away largely from this culture. But many of the sort
of most obedient soldiers in the Army's Army of God
like are that way. Because again, I can't overemphasize how
much these parenting manuals, which spanned from like nineteen seventy
(36:52):
to twenty fifteen, these texts, you know, the dates that
they were published, emphasize having an obedient child. What you
want is not like a child who's kind or curious
or thoughtful or smart. It's obedient, instantly obedient. Don't make
me count to three is the title of one of
the books. And like, what you're creating is a culture
(37:14):
of people who a like empathize with the aggressor at
all times. So hence this admiration for strength and even
admiration for cruelty, people who are trained to obey and
obey without question, and people who are very acclimated to
the use of violence.
Speaker 5 (37:30):
I mean, you're doing fascism in the home, right.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
So the the author, like Alice Miller, the author of
the book For Your Own Good, lays out a pretty
she was also a Holocaust survivor. She lays out a
pretty strong case for like, you know, early twentieth century
Germany having this poisonous pedagogy that also involved beating the
shit out of your kids until I.
Speaker 5 (37:50):
Was illegal to love your children, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
To obey you, and how basically this is how you
make a torture. And the book is called or your
Own Good And yeah, I mean I really think it
is like under valued in politics, Like how much this
culture of corporal punishment, which is yeah, Americans have like
(38:15):
moved away from universal approval of corporal punishment, we're still
like a lot higher than other Western democracies in that regard.
And like on a national level, we're the only country
in the world that hasn't ratified the UN Conventions on
the Rights of a Child, which include like having a
name and like not being beaten and not being thrown
(38:36):
into like ju the solitary.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Oh well, that's why America can't touch that. We need
to incarcerate the children.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
Yeah, the children, you're in for the cells.
Speaker 4 (38:46):
But it's also just like a lot of it actually
was like worries that like evangelicals like would sort of
object to the interference in their it's.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
An infringement on their religious freedom to bet the shit
out of baby.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
Yeah, and they're parental rights, which is another buzzword of this, this.
Speaker 5 (39:05):
Movement, parental rights is a red flag for me.
Speaker 4 (39:08):
Oh yeah, no, I hear parental rights, and I think
you want to beat the shit out of your kids.
Speaker 5 (39:13):
You don't want your children to learn science.
Speaker 4 (39:15):
Yeah, you at a homeschool and under educate your kids
or miseducate.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
You want to cause a measle's outbreak exactly.
Speaker 4 (39:24):
But that's like for us because we're weirdos. We're like
obsessively clued into this stuff. If you're not, Like, parental
rights is like religious freedom is, Like it sounds good, Yeah,
it's an effective marketing slogan, but like what it means
is like we're going to show up at the school
board and yell about how I mean. And Trump is
like bought into this obviously because he knows where his
(39:46):
bread is buttered. He has savvy Like he's like, you guys,
do the policy. But like his current parental rights based
his biggest policy that he's advocating is like denying federal
funding to any school with any vaccine a mandate, which
is basically just like make measles great again, like bring
back diphtheria. I think, like, yes, the MAGA movement is
(40:09):
for of the the efflorescence, the apotheosis of this steadily
building power, but like there's also just like fifty years
of power building behind it. And like even if Trump
was defeated at the federal level, which like I profoundly
hope he is, sorry to come out as like a
you know, partisan, a voter, like a hashtag a voter,
(40:31):
but like I think it would be just a nauseatingly
it's a horrifying thought that he I mean, first of all,
you would absolutely enact every item in this theocratic agenda,
starting with a national abortion band like that would happen
in the first hundred days, I think, which would just
functionally plunge American women into like a very very dark
(40:55):
septocemic nightmare.
Speaker 5 (40:57):
Yeah, the dark place that we're going as a coffin.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
Yeah yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (41:01):
But even should he lose, which you know hope, there's
still twenty two states where abortion is outlawed or severely restricted,
and these places are becoming care deserts. Like medical residents.
My extremely sexy partner is a medical resident, so I
(41:22):
know more about the state of medicine than I otherwise would.
But like residents don't want to do their residencies in
states with abortion restrictions, they're like.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
Right, given a choice, gynecological providers just aren't practicing there anymore.
Like even if you know, even your primary focus is
not abortions, or even if your primary focus is not
you know, pregnancy care, they just don't want to They
just don't want to work there.
Speaker 4 (41:47):
Well, it's also first of all that, but second of all,
it's like, if you're in the er, you're going to
experience pregnancy losss It happens in one in five pregnancy, right.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
So they're choosing to work in states where they're not
going to go to jail for doing medicine.
Speaker 4 (41:58):
Yeah, Like they don't to incur the moral injury of
not being able to apply the standard of care to
patients in extremely common situations such as incomplete miscarriage and
you know, pregnancy loss, whether you know self induced or
just like miscarriage is super common and nobody talks about it.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
It's more common than we an Ectopic pregnancy is so
much more common than people realize. Like there are so
many things that your body can do to betray you
that you need a doctor help.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
With just ordinary pregnancy.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
And then after the baby is born, then your lustrous
hair all falls out.
Speaker 4 (42:32):
Yeah, like ordinary pregnancy is so fraught with like weird
body horror. Like, but anyway, that's besides the point.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Whatever.
Speaker 4 (42:40):
The point is someone presents with abdominal pain in the
er and it turns out to be an ectopic pregnancy,
and like you can't do standard of care like dilation
and cure tash procedures without checking with the hospital lawyer.
Like that is a really bad position a care provider
(43:00):
to be in. So when you have these fundamentally unscientific laws,
right that are produced by people who don't know anything
about pregnancy and are like very intentionally ambiguous so that
cautious institutions will sort of interpret them at maximally interpret them,
Like the life of the mother, how dead does she
(43:21):
have to be?
Speaker 5 (43:22):
First?
Speaker 3 (43:22):
Yeah, she has to be almost dead, right, and then
sometimes she winds up dying because almost dead is tough
to judge, Like, it just winds up this grotesque sort
of farce of medicine, and very directly like residents don't
want to train, doctors don't want to practice in these places,
and so you.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
Know, right, so this ends up killing more people than
just the ones hemorrhaging in the parking lot. There are
people who have completely unrelated problems who are now unable
to access unrelated kinds of care because the doctors just aren't.
Speaker 4 (43:54):
There, yeah, Or people who have ordinary wanted pregnancies who
can't access neonatal care, who have to drive hours and
hours and hours to like get checkups, like you know,
I mean, human reproduction is like a pretty major part
of like life.
Speaker 5 (44:09):
And a lot of people are doing it.
Speaker 4 (44:11):
Yeah, like it's sort of how you know, it's just
people do it all the time, and like not being
able to access medical care around like the entire spectrum
of like reproduction is pretty catastrophic. But yeah, it also
impacts all the people not engaging in reproduction at this
moment in time, like doctors who are just like fuck this,
(44:31):
I'm not wearing out an er in Tennessee, you know,
because I want to be able to treat patients.
Speaker 5 (44:36):
Without a lawyer in the room.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, I mean.
Speaker 4 (44:39):
And then there are doctors who are bigots and doctors
who are happily on board with abortion bands. But like,
do you want that to be the only doctor in
your county?
Speaker 3 (44:47):
I don't think so.
Speaker 4 (44:49):
You know, it's just it's a really grim situation. And
I just like, I'm such an absolutist about bodily autonomy.
It's like, if you don't own your body, you are
not a full citizen, period of story. Like if if
a major organ in your body is treated as a
controlled substance, like, you are not a full and equal
citizen with rights, which I would like to be.
Speaker 5 (45:11):
I aspire to it.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
Yeah, so I want to ask you one more question
about your book, and I will let you go.
Speaker 5 (45:17):
I told you that I wouldn't keep you very long,
and I lied.
Speaker 4 (45:21):
But it's like, it's just because I like talking to you.
So it's I think I've done the majority of the topics.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
You can't.
Speaker 4 (45:28):
You can't be like, oh, it's about your book, which
you should buy listeners.
Speaker 5 (45:36):
Pre order it now wherever you buy your books.
Speaker 4 (45:38):
And if you like the delcent tones of my voice,
which are I shouldn't have you to narrate in my
audience books, you brush that passage.
Speaker 5 (45:46):
I'm a professional talker now, yeah.
Speaker 4 (45:47):
Yeah, Well I narrated the audio book and then was
like why did I write such complicated sentences?
Speaker 3 (45:53):
Afterwards?
Speaker 2 (45:54):
So now that I read my own writing like on
a regular basis out loud, which is new for me, right,
you know, I have my podcast and I'm writing my
little scripts and then I'm reading into a little microphone.
Now that I struggle with that. I noticed while I
was reading your book that oh I wouldn't be able
to read this out loud. I know, where would I breathe?
I know it was because I write like that too,
(46:15):
and it's something I'm like really grappling with right now.
Speaker 4 (46:17):
She's like, call me ten clubs, Talia. I'm like, ah, fuck,
this sentence is this paragraph? This sentence is a paragraph.
Stop it.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
Like I really really lost, really lost momentum on that one.
Speaker 4 (46:27):
Yeah, I know, but like I managed to get through it.
And if you if you enjoy the dulcae sounds of
my voice, you can hear it for like, I don't know,
eight hours or whatever.
Speaker 3 (46:37):
I assume weird being like listen to my voice.
Speaker 5 (46:40):
But you know, invite me into your mind.
Speaker 4 (46:43):
Yeah, but I do think it's nice as an author
to read your audiobook because I can like get mad
and like, you know, emphasize stuff that I think is important.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
And also I'm a.
Speaker 4 (46:54):
Theater kid, like, like I don't have many opportunities to
perform and it is a performance and it's it's fun.
Speaker 5 (47:02):
But yeah, and that comes out the same time as
the physical book.
Speaker 4 (47:06):
Yes, it comes out audio ebook, physical book with a
cool snake on it.
Speaker 5 (47:12):
Oh yeah, Oh, I guess this is an audio medium.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
The listener can't see that I'm showing the cool cover.
Speaker 4 (47:18):
Yeah, it's got a cool snake, a red and black
snake on the cover. I've named him Rocco, but he
has a cross for a tongue. If you're looking for
a book to give to the metal head in your life,
oh yeah, it's pretty metal. Metal heads, atheists, degenerates.
Speaker 3 (47:35):
Everyone is going to love this book.
Speaker 5 (47:37):
It's perfect for everyone.
Speaker 4 (47:39):
And if you're light on cash flow, want it for
supporting India authors is ask your library to stock it
or your local bookstore because library orders are really important
and you can just like put in a request in
your library system and that is super helpful.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
Hell yeah, everybody go to your library's website right now
and request that they purchase a copy of Wild Faith
by Talia Lavin.
Speaker 5 (48:03):
Yeah, talywhere else can people find you online?
Speaker 3 (48:07):
So I have a newsletter. It's on button down.
Speaker 4 (48:10):
I left some stack because they were like We're never
gonna sensor Nazis, but we will sensor porn. And I
was like, I don't like your priorities, so I left
for button Down. So it's buttondown dot com slash the
sword in the sandwich, or if you just google the
sword and the sandwich comes up. Most Tuesdays I write
about like the horrific state of politics, et cetera, And
then Fridays I write an essay about a different sandwich
(48:34):
on Wikipedia's list of notable sandwiches, and so far I've
written one hundred and eleven sandwiches.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
The sandwich content alone is worth the price of admission.
You need to find out about these sandwiches.
Speaker 3 (48:48):
I mean it just and I get really deep into
the history and the provenance and like I'm like, ah,
the shifting of peoples led to this sandwich, So I
get really deep into it. And then you.
Speaker 4 (49:01):
Can also find me on Blue Sky, where I most
of the time now because Twitter is just like robots
and Nazis and Nazi robots, where I'm at swords Jew.
I'm still on Vishy Twitter as Mobi Dick Energy. And
you know, if you want to say hi or invite
me to speak at your synagogue or bookstore I'm at
(49:22):
Talia l even writes at gmail dot com. Or church
if you're like cool. Yeah, if it's like a cool church, yeah,
you show up and they pass you a snake.
Speaker 3 (49:33):
Yeah, exactly. Oh god, I didn't do enough speaking at
times for this book.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
Well, Tally, thank you so much for coming on today again.
The book is Wild Faith by Talia Lavin, and you
can pre order it now wherever books are sold, and
you should request it from your library.
Speaker 4 (49:50):
Yeah, we stand civic services, and I'm a huge fan
of public libraries and also of Molly Conger. So thanks
for having me on and take care, Bye bye.
Speaker 5 (50:07):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 3 (50:18):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
You can now find sources for It Could Happen here
listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome back to it could happen here in
your daily dose of the horrors that are, in fact,
already happening all around us. I'm your occasional host, Molly Conger,
and I am delighted to be joined today by the
critically acclaimed author of Culture Warlords, journalist researcher, sword enthusiast,
Sandwich expert, and my friend Talia Lavin. Hello.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (00:26):
I once introduced myself at an event as a Sandwich historian,
which I think was the pinnacle of my public speaking career.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
But this is a second pinnacle. Hey, Molly, what's up?
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Thank you so much for coming on today to talk
with me about your new book, Wild Faith is coming
out in just a few weeks October fifteenth, right.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
Yeah, Wild Faith, How the Christian Right is taking over America.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Not the terrible B movie entitled Wild Faith.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yeah, the SEO is scrambled on that one. But the book, however,
is very good. I mean, first of all, I just
want to say, like I've been reading the gally copy
that you sent me, which I honestly made me feel
very fancy. I've never received a galley copy of a
book that's not out yet before. So I felt, you know,
kind of a kind of a broadcasting professional with my
special book.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
It's an exclusive club. You're one of like five people
thus read it.
Speaker 5 (01:18):
Oh my god, that is that's very exclusive.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
Well it's about to become a lot less exclusive, so
feel special while you can, right.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
But I realized while I was reading it, you know,
I have my little sticky tabs because I'm reading a
lot more books lately, regrettably not not not a big
time book guy.
Speaker 5 (01:35):
It's always reading.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
I read a lot of court documents, but I'm reading
a lot of books right now for research for my show,
and it's like my little sticky tabs. And as in
reading it, I realize I'm not marking passages that I
think would be useful for us to talk about in
this interview. I'm just putting my little tabs on passages
that just like punched me in the gut.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
You know, Ah, sorry for punching you.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
No, but I mean, I mean with the way the
power of your words, because like a lot of what
I'm reading sucks. It's just right, Like I spent all
day yesterday reading like twenty five year old Issues of Resistance,
which was the quarterly magazine for a white power music label.
So this, I mean it's a real departure, So you know,
(02:21):
really just reveling in the richness of the pros and
the fact that it, you know, didn't want to kill me.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
No, I also have experienced neo Nazi research fatigue, and
also just like the sort of relentless grimness of allowing
through these like fundamentally hostile texts, and also like academic texts,
which are difficult in their own way. I try to
write accessively or just like excitingly. I find that a
(02:50):
lot of especially nonfiction sort of journalism me books tend
to be a little dry, and I'm like, let's not
be dry. Let's be like spicy, and you know, like
form and function, Like you're more likely to be moved
by a message if you find the writing compelling.
Speaker 5 (03:10):
You know, it's just you have such a way with words.
I mean, you know this.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
You're a professional writer. I don't want to embarrass you
on the show.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
So I'm twirling my air like yes, but I do
write for a living.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
If you'll indulge me, if it's legal, if the publisher
will allow this, I just want to read this passage
from the introduction that I think is a good jumping
off point, and it was one of the first things
I marked because I was just like, oh, hell yeah, we're.
Speaker 5 (03:34):
Getting into this. There's good words in here, okay.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
The Christian Right is a force in American politics and
has been for decades, half a century to be precise,
during which it has steadily gained power. It started in
school rooms, continued in courtrooms, and perseveres with the aid
of people who are perfectly willing to call in bomb
threats to hospitals and attempt to overturn elections. It features
self proclaimed profits with a distinct interest in policy, newly
(04:01):
minted apostles with very definite ideas about spiritual battle and
its earthly components, and pastors eager to usher in the
end of the world. Its adherents have hymns and devotionals
and speaking tongues on occasion, and the showiest among them
are known to march their cities, blowing rams horns in
an effort to topple, as Joshua once did, the wicked
cities of the world. They have their own insular world,
(04:22):
their own media apparatus. They have legislators who could fire
in brimstone speeches from the badly carpeted rooms where laws
are made. They have lawyers too, and in case the
lawyers fail, there's always the promise of congregations that might
coalesce into mobs or arsonists. Who's burning holy zeal coalesces
into the tiny pinpoint of a molotop cocktail. And I
(04:47):
knew from the intro that we were in for a ride.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
Yeah, it's like cast of characters, the worst people ever,
but like, let's write about it.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
In an exciting way. I think that one of.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
The themes of the book is really how these extra
legal extremist movements like the anti abortion terror movement, and
the legal framework of a movement work together. I actually
initially heard about this from a friend who was talking
about how like during the gay rights movement you had
(05:22):
sort of the act up builth demonstrations, the diets, and
then you have the sort of like more respectively coded
like gay people who you know, we're talking to the
government and trying to get elected and you know, really
trying to influence research, and that every movement needs sort
of a radical outside and then a respectable inside. And
I'm like, oh, this works in like the acratic movements too,
(05:46):
where you have like this you know, fringe that's burning
down clinics, and then people steadily working for fifty years
to like ban abortion, and they have the same DNA
and they have the same goals. They just go about
it differently but complement each other. And I think that's
like a running theme in the book, is that, like
(06:07):
you have lawyers and you have legislators, and then you
have mobs, and they're sort of all working towards the
same goals. And that's really what we're seeing, I think,
on the Christian Right after decades of building power.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Yeah, one of the notes that I wrote down in
that vein while I was reading was that, you know,
the Christian Right drives its power across a spectrum, right
from the clinic bomber to the senator. But it's not
you know, you might say two sides of the same coin.
But to me, it looks like this isn't two different
spheres of power too sort of separate but coexisting or
comorbid ideologies. They're just different numbers on the same dial, right,
(06:46):
it's turning up and turning down.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
Yeah, it's like the hand that lights the torch and
the hand that puts it to the you know, pyre.
They perform different functions that they have really the same goals.
And if like me, you view stripping half the populace
of its bodily autonomy, imposing a theocracy, hounding queer people
(07:12):
out of public life, slash into death as fundamentally violent goals. Yeah,
I don't think there's like a respectable iteration necessarily, there's
just cosplaying respectability and right.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
You can say it with a tie on on the
Senate floor, but it's it's the same message.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Yeah, And I think so much of our media apparatus
and governmental apparatus is really sort of views like again
this like form and function, right, Like if you are
if you say something politely, it doesn't really matter what
you're saying, like if you say something with a suit
(07:53):
on in the register of like, you know, in a
calm sort of Mike Pencian, rush Limbaugh and decap As.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
He called himself a boy.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
She says, did he say that, Yeah, that's what he
called himself when he read it, did a like evangelical
radio show.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
No, no matter what you say, as long as you
are like white and you say it politely, like this is.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Fundamentally sort of fine.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
And then if you look at it from you know,
a step or two back, and you're like, no, actually,
no matter how politely say it, this is like a violent,
deeply unpopular theocratic agenda that like fundamentally is incompatible with
multiracial democracy. I also think, and I keep running into this,
(08:37):
like well meaning liberals being like, but isn't there a
separation of church and state?
Speaker 3 (08:41):
And I'm like, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
Do you fucking think there is? In Alabama? Do you
think there is an Arkansas? And all of these you
know in Texas, Like all of these figures are like,
we're Christians.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
We're making laws for Jesus, and.
Speaker 5 (08:55):
We have covenant marriages and we want you to too.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
Yeah, like we're gonna outlage because of God, and like,
you know, women dying of sepsis in hospital parking lots
is what Jesus wants. And like, and I experienced this,
I think you probably have to when you like report
on you know, zealots and extremists, and people inevitably wind
(09:18):
up like measuring other people's weep by their own bushel.
In other words, they are like they can't really believe
this stuff, and it's like, no, they really do, they
can't really have these goals.
Speaker 5 (09:30):
First of all, they do, but also doesn't.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
Matter, right, I mean the question of like impact versus intent.
First of all, it's I think it's perfectly possible to
be both a grifter and a true believer at the
same time.
Speaker 5 (09:42):
That's just synergy baby.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
And also fundamentally, this is a world premise done grievance,
where it's this idea that like, the world has got
one over on you. And so in a sense, grift
is just like, well, you know, the world's corrupt and
I'm fighting a righteous cause, so what does it matter
the ethics that I sort of skip on along the way.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
I mean, once you've amped the stakes up to you're
fighting the literal devil and everyone who's getting in my
way is animated by actual demons from Hell.
Speaker 5 (10:15):
I mean, the stakes couldn't be higher. So you do
what you have to.
Speaker 4 (10:18):
Do exactly, and it's this theory of power. And so
then people sort of standing outside of that paradigm who
are not keyed into this idea of like we're in
an ethical spiritual battle and we must create like a
Kingdom of Christ on earth in America to win against
the devil, and then people outside being like, you're hypocrites,
(10:39):
and it's like it's not a valid criticism to them
because they're like, first of all, you're not like a
Christian if you're a liberal, but also like you're not
on our level, Like we're fighting Lucifer and you're probably
a stand like on his team if you oppose us. So,
you know, a multitude of apparent hypocrisies can be excused
(11:01):
by the idea that like this is a holy war
and in war there's like all kinds of avert behavior.
Speaker 5 (11:09):
That's they're doing holy war crimes.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (11:13):
I mean this is why, for example, you see a
lot of like prominent female figures from Philish Slafley, you know,
in the seventies and eighties, to like the trad wives now,
and it's like, how does this fit in with your
overall sort of idea that women should be chaste and
submissive and meek and silent. I mean, first of all,
tradwife stuff is often fetish Spanish content.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
But yeah, I mean Pilish Laffy made a living professionally
saying that women shouldn't make a living professionally, but that
contradiction doesn't matter.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
Yeah, I mean I think I call them valkyries for
feminine submission in the book. Yeah, I mean, at the
end of the day, like if you believe that this
is your your calling, your mission, you know, your mission
field in the service of the Lord to undo the
demonic sort of influence of feminism, Like of course you're
going to.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Speak, You've been moved by God to do so.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
And of course, like female leaders with the evangelical community,
like sort of minority Republicans can be like knocked off
their pedestal quicker and easier, but like they.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Still can come out and exist and testify.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
And Schlaughley throughout her very long prolific and lucrative career,
you know, was like I'm a housewife with six kids,
and that was her. That was how she defined herself,
even while being this incredibly prominent figure and one of
the sort of key architects of the current Christian right
coalition of like right wing Catholics. She and Paul we
(12:45):
Wairik and Leonard Leo and some other right wing Catholics
brought these Catholic values of being all about abortion to
the evangelical right, which prior to the seventies is like,
that's a weird Catholic thing.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
You don't really I.
Speaker 5 (13:00):
Wanted to talk about that.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
So I'm not sure how sort of common knowledge this is,
but the Protestant Christian community in the United States did
not care about abortion until the seventies. It was not
an issue in their communities. They were generally pro abortion.
They were you know, the Baptists were in favor of
Roe V.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
Wade.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
Yeah, the fucking Southern Baptist Convention came out in like
seventy four I think it was, and was like, yeah,
we approve of rov Wade.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
So it's not like, you know, opposition to abortion is
baked into Christianity. It is baked into the American Evangelical
Christianity of post nineteen seventy five or so because of
this sort of conscious cynical political decision. And that I
think is so interesting because you know, you get into
this conversation of well, what are their deeply held beliefs
(13:49):
and do they really believe it and does that matter?
But we can pin down the moment they started believing
this and we know why, and it's segregation.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
I mean, first of all, I would say, like people
can still like this is like several generations later of
like constant barrages of extremely violent propaganda against abortions.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
So right, so the belief is sincere today, but you
could look at it where it was born.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Yeah, exactly, you should have been aborted, right, yeah, no,
it definitely should not have been carried to term. But
like it's it's crazy. And in addition to Mooi's book,
Randall Baumer does some really good coverage of this. So
the sort of general arc is like three sort of
nineteen seventies, you had this like generally conservative population of
(14:41):
Southern Baptists who were like on board with McCarthyism, hated
the godless Reds, but kind of viewed politics as like
worldly and not really their sphere, and we're not particularly
politically engaged. And then brown versus a board of education
passes immediately, the white Christian populist just disinvests these from
(15:05):
the public schools, leaving multiple counties in the South without
functionally any public education at all. And this mushroom after rain,
kind of like patch of patches of parochial schools with
church or Christian in the name start popping up, and
they're all white schools their segregation academies is the sort
(15:28):
of term of art for these and they're explicitly under
a Christian agis they're religious schools.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
They're tax exempt as a result.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
And then in like the late sixties and seventies, the
government was like, you can't be tax exempt and like
considered a charitable organization if you are segregated and don't
have any black.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Students or minority students.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
And that is what woke the sleeping dragon of the
Christian right really like, you know, get your filthy government
hands off our tax exemptions. Like they just went, you
know nuts. They were really mobilized, you know, like these
are the people who are like growing tomatoes at Ruby Bridges, Like,
you know, they're really politically motivated for the first time
(16:17):
because they're experiencing like a consequence for segregation.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
And so this is when like Jerry Fowell.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
And Ralph Reid and you know, James Dobson start sort
of coming forward and being more prominent. And then by
the sort of mid seventies to eighties, you had these
like savvy or political operators coming out and saying, hey, guys,
segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever is like, it's great
(16:48):
that it really fired y'all up, but it has sort
of a limited appeal.
Speaker 5 (16:54):
And they shot George Wallace. It's over.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
Yeah, Like there's going to be a sailing on that,
and a lot of people think you suck. So why
are you getting on the ground on this new civil
rights struggle abortion where you can fight for the unborn
who conveniently will never disagree with you.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Right, their voices don't have to be centered here. We
can speak for them.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
I mean, they're the most convenient political constituency in history.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Right because they're so innocent and you can't milkshake duck
a fetus.
Speaker 5 (17:23):
He's not even here.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
Yeah, he can't talk, but he's not gonna say shit.
So I mean that's like the very capsule history. And
then of course it becomes this idea of like the
(17:44):
moral majority and where the guardians of America's soul and
we're gonna get really weird about sex.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Also, it's just.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Like if you strip it all the way down to
the studs, Like the core of this is women are
bleeding to death in hospital parking lots because Gary Fowell
didn't want to pay his taxes or stop being racist.
Speaker 5 (18:04):
Yeah, I mean that's not fair.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
No, people sometimes like are a little skeptical when I'm like,
all of the hatreds are interconnected. But then you look
at like concrete historical examples of like this world historical
wave of misogyny. I mean, it's not that this population
wasn't like weird about sex or weird about women like.
Speaker 5 (18:26):
To start with.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
I mean maybe they would have gotten here a different way,
but that's how we got here.
Speaker 4 (18:30):
Yeah, we got here by just like no, we will
pay taxes on our segregation academies. Bob Jones University's inter
racial dating ban is perfectly great, and we're gonna mobilize
about it. And so what you have then now is
just like fifty years of political lock staff because and
(18:52):
you see this.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
In like other religious communities. I mean, like I know, like.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
It's sort of notorious how much corruption slides by in
New York because like the that a communities vote as
a block, like it is very useful to have a
congregation that all votes the same way.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
It's politically useful.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
I mean, what other populations can you get together once
a week as a captive audience and speak to with
authority if you can mobilize those people. And that's what
Jerry Folwell saw, right, is like this is a great
way to get a lot of people to vote the
way I want them to vote.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
Yeah, And you know, the church has always been like
a really prominent institution in American civil society, especially as
the rest of sort of civil society has fallen away
and degraded. Like churches are some of the only social
outlets that Americans have. And what's interesting when you talk
to evangelicals and next evangelicals is just like being a
(19:47):
Republican is like part of their religious identity in a
major way. It's like this is how you vote, and
this is you know, how you dress, and this is
how you go to church and so on. But like
the idea of being a Democrat is like not only
you know, a little bit out of step with your community,
it's heretical.
Speaker 5 (20:06):
I mean, that's how the demons get in.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
Yeah, yeah, demoncrats, I mean, and like, yeah, it's stupid.
But it's also like half of the people saying demoncrats
like literally mean democrats are aligned with Lucifer.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
And I think that's a point that I don't want
to get lost on the listener. This you know, this
idea that people literally have demons in them, that demons
are active in the world, that demons are motivating the
actions of their enemies.
Speaker 5 (20:30):
It is real for them.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
And I'm not saying that to be derisive or you know,
it's real.
Speaker 5 (20:36):
It's real.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
It is an animating factor for a lot of these people.
And that's hard to wrap your mind around. I mean,
I struggle with the idea that that is real for them.
But like that's how you get things like satanic panic,
and we see echoes of satanic panic in this idea
of you know, groomers in kids' schools. They really have
this fundamental, like foundational belief in this, you know, whether
(20:59):
or not they're calling it demons, that the existence of
some sort of ontological evil that is coming for their children.
And like once you arrive at the place where, like
where you understand that that's real for them, their actions
make more sense. Like they're not behaving irrationally if you
if you truly believe that these things were happening, you'd
act crazy too.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
Yeah, I mean it's really hard to get people to
step outside their own worldviews and in both directions, right, Like,
I don't believe that demons are, you know, abroad in
the world and motivating like every element of political action
to someone who.
Speaker 5 (21:33):
I'm starting to see them some places, but generally no.
Speaker 4 (21:37):
To someone who does my viewpoint is incomprehensible and vice versa.
So I think part of I mean not that I'm
like one of those people that's like polarization is the
big problem, like you know, as opposed to anything with
like concrete policy, like you know where it's like, the
big problem is we all don't like each other enough.
And I'm like, no, the big problem is like people
(21:58):
are espousing policies that will cause deaths, and like also
that people like believe their political enemies are like literally
agents of Satan. I would say, is like a bigger
problem than polarization in the abstract. But yeah, I mean
this this doctrine of sort of spiritual warfare, which if
you like google it, it's just like, oh, this is
the mindset and it's like you, the listener to it
(22:19):
could happen here, like you've been drafted into the spirit
war from like birth.
Speaker 5 (22:23):
Congratulations, private, and.
Speaker 4 (22:26):
You're probably in the side of the devil, so good job.
I mean, I don't know, like a lot of Americans
believe in angels and demons, and that's fine, but it's
like when that starts impinging on the political sphere in
a very serious way, It's like, how far would you
go if you believed your opponent was under the thrall
(22:46):
of like Satan, you would go pretty damn far's.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
I mean, that's why you know clinic bombings were and
I guess are on the rise again, right, Like these
arsens of clinics. It's not like other kinds of crime
in my mind, right, It's not a crime of passion
or an interpersonal dispute. It is people who have been
motivated by this belief that this is a place where
a genocide is happening, that there's a holocaust going on
(23:10):
in there, that people are ripping you know, actual living
babies limb from limb, and if you really did believe that,
their actions make sense. And that's why it happens so often, right,
because these people are motivated by this belief that God
commands them to take this action.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
Yeah, I mean there's your dual element to that. I mean,
first of all, absolutely, yes, Like I've read some anti
abortion terror manuals speaking of extremely unpleasant research, and it's
just really like these people are murderers. It's mass murderers,
Like you're like killing Hitler, right.
Speaker 5 (23:41):
And wouldn't you wouldn't you kill baby Hitler exactly?
Speaker 4 (23:44):
But poltical about baby Hitler in like a countrywide scale.
And when specific abortion doctors have been mentioned in right
wing media, those guys end up dead and that's not
a coincidence. So there's that element of it, which is
the majority of it.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
It's huge.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
But there's also this idea of demonic geography, where like
demons can possess sort of places like abortion clinics or
institutions like planned parenthood or even the Democratic Party, which
you know, I read a lot of demonology books like
Taxonomies of Demons. Pigs in the Parlor was this really
(24:23):
big hit in like the seventies, and it's been like
reissued and reissued and millions of copies, and it's just like,
on one level, it's really compelling because it's like are
you tired, are you sad? Are you feeling clumsy? Do
you have like persistent stomach aches? It's demons and here's
how you deal with that. And like, in a country
with shitty healthcare, I can totally see why someone who's
(24:46):
like really depressed might go to like an exorcist or
a deliverance minister, which is the Protestant.
Speaker 5 (24:53):
If you'll try anything, and this guy's going to do
it for free.
Speaker 4 (24:56):
I watched so many videos of deliverance ministers doing their thing,
and it's like crazy. It's like people, you know, are
just like sitting there and they're like people praying over
them and screaming in their face, like and they wind
up vomiting and crying and it's all very like intense.
And you know, if you think about it from a
placebo effect perspective for like one second, you're like, obviously
(25:18):
this person would feel a weightlifted from them they've had
this ecstatic experience.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
And this isn't the majority of it.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
This is about fourteen percent of America identifies this as
white evangelics, so many Protestants and still so many people
because people keep asking me, like how many people really
believe shit like this, and I'm like, well, about eighty
to ninety percent of like people who identify as white
Evangelical Protestants espows most of these beliefs.
Speaker 5 (25:46):
So that's like third, that's like thirty million people.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Yeah, yeah, And then you add in the Catholic.
Speaker 5 (25:51):
Right, which is getting weirder every day.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
Yeah, Jdvans, I hate women exist to reproduce breede you
filthy now. But like even beyond the adult Catholic convert
style weirdness, like right wing Catholics are an integral part
of the Christian right, like Amy Cony Barrett, you know
antonin Scalia, that kind of thing. That's another bunch of millions.
(26:17):
So this reactionary force has like numerically significant constituency. On
the other hand, it definitely punches way above its weight
in terms of right.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
They have an outsized influence of both you know, on
the legislative floor and when it comes to you know,
who's racking up the most bodies.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
Yeah, And also even like the culture wars right, like
the sort of loudest culture warriors tend to at least
come from like a background of I'm speaking for God
or Christ is king or whatever it is, Like how
many times have you and I encountered that an extremist
contacts But also like the sort of more mainstream me,
(26:59):
what the fuck the mainstream is? I don't know, it's
full of piss, But like the more mainstream, like Christian grifter, Right,
they come from this. I'm speaking from my faith. These
are my religious principles. But like it is worth noting
again just to rewind in our conversation. But like the
full concept of religious liberty and religious freedom absolutely was
(27:21):
like an ad slogan coined in the seventies around segregation.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Right, religious freedom to do what? I mean, it's like
states rights, states rights.
Speaker 5 (27:29):
To do what?
Speaker 4 (27:31):
Right, Yeah, like you answer the question, Yeah, it's religious
freedom to have segregated schools, is the answer to that.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
And you still see echoes of that with either still
religious schools that can't accept federal grant money because they
don't let students be gay, right, Like it's not racial
segregation anymore, but they are refusing to admit gay students,
and that is a violation of federal civil rights law.
Speaker 4 (27:56):
Yeah, but that's where I mean, that's where that slogan started.
And then it's blossomed to clue basically like a gay
person came into my shop.
Speaker 5 (28:03):
Except they didn't, right, I know, there's no standing, right,
Like that whole case was built a lie. Whatever.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
That's yeah, it's like and the standing in the Supreme
Court is so ridiculous. This I mean, in many ways,
this Supreme Court is the culmination and embodiment and of
botheosis of like Christian right theocracy, because you have these
like absolutely batshit religious zealots, I mean Amy Cony Barrett
is like from a cult, and in this unaccountable body,
(28:31):
they're passing unpopular theocratic principles that the majority of the
American public uh disagrees with. But like specifically, what they
are trying to enact and what they are what they
are enacting is this theocratic agenda where like the government
is in your bedroom, the government is in your doctor's office,
like the government is sniffing your panties, and it's it's
(28:54):
gross and it's upsetting and fundamentally, like theocracies are just
very famous all up in your junk, Like they're obsessed
with like controlling and censoring sexuality of all kinds of
a particularly female sexuality and queer sexuality, like snuff those out.
And so that's part of the reason why so many
(29:16):
abortion arguments, Like first of all, you have the like
the you're murdering this cluster of cells, which is a
full human baby, Like do you remember that article in
the Guardian A couple of years ago that like showed
the actual size of like fetuses at various stages of development,
and it was like they were just like so little,
like these little like little fingernails.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Yeah, and it doesn't look like a tiny baby doll.
That's just very small.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
Yeah, exactly, it's not like a mini baby like it
like tides of Gore. It's like literally like a tiny
cluster of cells. So the anti abortion propaganda, like, you
are not immune to propaganda. It has like wormed its
way into the popular consciousness just by virtue of its
ubiquity and constant repetition being the key to successful propaganda.
(30:03):
But so many of these arguments, in addition to this
abortion is murder stuff is also just like you should
have kept your legs closed.
Speaker 5 (30:11):
Right, This is a this is a consequence God did
this to you.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
Yeah, Like sex for your sins immortal sin, and sex
should be punished, and I.
Speaker 5 (30:19):
They must be doing it wrong.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
Like I'm like, why do you want sex to have
consequences and be punished? The like intensity of the misogyny
around purity culture is so intense.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
I wanted to ask you, you know, about the experience
of writing the book, right, so you know your first book,
Culture Warlords, is traumatizing for you to craft, right, because
you had to spend so much time in these digital
spaces in some in some cases physical spaces with you know,
neo Nazis, four Chen guys, you know, aspiring terrorists, and
so that's traumatic to experience, you know, But largely that
(31:06):
experience was alone, like at your computer screen, sort of
consuming this content that was eroding your soul. But the
second half of this book is about child abuse, right,
And like you interviewed people who grew up in this
movement about their lives, about their husband's raping them and
their parents beating them as children, and like, how did
(31:32):
those experiences compare? And like what was that? How, I mean,
how did you prepare to do that? I don't know
even know how it would begin to do that with care.
Speaker 4 (31:41):
I mean, I think my goal going in is like
I'm not going to betray you, Like that was my
guiding ethos of just like I view like your trust
in me as a sacred thing, not like sacred in
any formal religious sense, but just like you know, I
view your trust in me as something that I hold
very dearly.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
It's very important.
Speaker 4 (32:03):
I'm going to treat your pain with as much gentleness
and respect as I can. And like, I interviewed over
one hundred people largely about their experiences with experiencing child
abuse and an evangelical milieu as is laid out with
painstaking instructions and like all of these parenting manuals. Actually,
like I think reading the parenting manuals was even more
(32:25):
disturbing than talking to people, because like people were like,
this fucked me up and it was wrong. And then
these books are like, no, you must beat your toddler
because Jesus says so, and like here's exactly how to
beat your toddler, and here's what you should use to
beat your toddler, and here's the like supremely fucked up,
like weird ritual that we prescribe. And then like reading
(32:47):
those in tandem with like like the accounts of people
who were like this specific thing like sucked me up
for life and really messed up my ability to have
like intimacy or self confidence or whatever.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
All of that stuff. I mean, it was tough. I
definitely took more time, Like I wrote Culture Warlords in
nine months, so I was like totally immersed constantly.
Speaker 5 (33:07):
It just like didn't come up Forrayer.
Speaker 4 (33:09):
Yeah at all, and this one I was like, I
need a little more time, guys, Like I wrote it over,
you know, almost three years. I also pretentiously started calling
this philosophy Guarding your Heart because I really got lost
in the sauce with culture warlords, Like I was in
a dark place while I was writing it, and afterwards
I was also the like it came out in mid COVID,
(33:31):
so that didn't help either. But uh, it was a real,
really rough experience with this. I was like, I'm going
to keep writing. I'm gonna write about sandwiches all the
way through. I'm going to like make sure I have
friendships and stuff that's grounding me. And I think consciously
having that at the forefront of my mind really helped. That.
Being said, like what was really encouraging was all of
(33:53):
these people who had experienced this sort of child abuse
industrial complex in the evangelical community, where like, we really
value that someone wants to hear what we have to say,
and also that it's someone from outside the community is
like paying attention and thinks this is important, which is
not to denigrate like expangelical voices, but more to say
(34:16):
that like, I guess there's a certain validation when someone
who's like not didn't grow up in your corner of religiosity,
dark corner.
Speaker 5 (34:24):
And sort of bringing it to an outside audience too.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
I think a lot of expangelicals their audience is largely
their fellow expangelicals exactly.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
And I'm someone who, like I grew up as a Jew,
and I'm like, yeah, this sucked, this is terrible. I'm
like appalled reading like to Train Up a Child by
the Pearls or The Strong Willed Child by jam Stobson, which, like,
to be clear, the strong willed child is a bad thing.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
It's a bad thing to have a child with us.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
You have to beat it out of them, sure, literally,
And I'm going into this in the wild recently. I
don't know if you have come across this guy online.
Do you know the nineties movie The Little Rascals.
Speaker 4 (35:01):
Oh my god, alf from The Little Rascals turns out
to be Able Falfa.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
The guy who played Alfalfa's name is Bug Hall. He
like really like I don't, got into a sort of
main character situation over some posts about how he beats
his infants.
Speaker 5 (35:15):
He beats infants because that's I guess a good way
to raise a baby.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
Yeah. Also I think he's homeless.
Speaker 5 (35:23):
No, he's a surf.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Oh he's in a voluntary serfdom arrangement.
Speaker 4 (35:30):
Oh my god. Okay, well he sounds like a big rascal. Yeah,
he's continued that trajectory of rascaledom. But don't beat your kids.
I mean, I will also say the reason why this
book focuses so much on child abuse, which, like I
encountered some some haters and losers and doubters along the
(35:52):
way who were like, why are you focused so much
on child abuse? And I was like, there are a
lot of different theories about like how authoritarianism developed, but
one of the big ones is focusing on the pedagogy
in authoritarian societies, the societies that become authoritarian, you know,
evolve from democracy to authoritarianism, and beating the shit out
(36:14):
of people from when they're in infancy and particularly when
they display disobedience or ask why, or you know.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Just deviate from expectations.
Speaker 5 (36:27):
It's a great way to make an obedient brown shirt.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
Yeah, exactly, Like this is a recipe for future authoritarians.
Like the people I spoke to had sort of broken
away largely from this culture. But many of the sort
of most obedient soldiers in the Army's Army of God
like are that way. Because again, I can't overemphasize how
much these parenting manuals, which spanned from like nineteen seventy
(36:52):
to twenty fifteen, these texts, you know, the dates that
they were published, emphasize having an obedient child. What you
want is not like a child who's kind or curious
or thoughtful or smart. It's obedient, instantly obedient. Don't make
me count to three is the title of one of
the books. And like, what you're creating is a culture
(37:14):
of people who a like empathize with the aggressor at
all times. So hence this admiration for strength and even
admiration for cruelty, people who are trained to obey and
obey without question, and people who are very acclimated to
the use of violence.
Speaker 5 (37:30):
I mean, you're doing fascism in the home, right.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
So the the author, like Alice Miller, the author of
the book For Your Own Good, lays out a pretty
she was also a Holocaust survivor. She lays out a
pretty strong case for like, you know, early twentieth century
Germany having this poisonous pedagogy that also involved beating the
shit out of your kids until I.
Speaker 5 (37:50):
Was illegal to love your children, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
To obey you, and how basically this is how you
make a torture. And the book is called or your
Own Good And yeah, I mean I really think it
is like under valued in politics, Like how much this
culture of corporal punishment, which is yeah, Americans have like
(38:15):
moved away from universal approval of corporal punishment, we're still
like a lot higher than other Western democracies in that regard.
And like on a national level, we're the only country
in the world that hasn't ratified the UN Conventions on
the Rights of a Child, which include like having a
name and like not being beaten and not being thrown
(38:36):
into like ju the solitary.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Oh well, that's why America can't touch that. We need
to incarcerate the children.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
Yeah, the children, you're in for the cells.
Speaker 4 (38:46):
But it's also just like a lot of it actually
was like worries that like evangelicals like would sort of
object to the interference in their it's.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
An infringement on their religious freedom to bet the shit
out of baby.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
Yeah, and they're parental rights, which is another buzzword of this, this.
Speaker 5 (39:05):
Movement, parental rights is a red flag for me.
Speaker 4 (39:08):
Oh yeah, no, I hear parental rights, and I think
you want to beat the shit out of your kids.
Speaker 5 (39:13):
You don't want your children to learn science.
Speaker 4 (39:15):
Yeah, you at a homeschool and under educate your kids
or miseducate.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
You want to cause a measle's outbreak exactly.
Speaker 4 (39:24):
But that's like for us because we're weirdos. We're like
obsessively clued into this stuff. If you're not, Like, parental
rights is like religious freedom is, Like it sounds good, Yeah,
it's an effective marketing slogan, but like what it means
is like we're going to show up at the school
board and yell about how I mean. And Trump is
like bought into this obviously because he knows where his
(39:46):
bread is buttered. He has savvy Like he's like, you guys,
do the policy. But like his current parental rights based
his biggest policy that he's advocating is like denying federal
funding to any school with any vaccine a mandate, which
is basically just like make measles great again, like bring
back diphtheria. I think, like, yes, the MAGA movement is
(40:09):
for of the the efflorescence, the apotheosis of this steadily
building power, but like there's also just like fifty years
of power building behind it. And like even if Trump
was defeated at the federal level, which like I profoundly
hope he is, sorry to come out as like a
you know, partisan, a voter, like a hashtag a voter,
(40:31):
but like I think it would be just a nauseatingly
it's a horrifying thought that he I mean, first of all,
you would absolutely enact every item in this theocratic agenda,
starting with a national abortion band like that would happen
in the first hundred days, I think, which would just
functionally plunge American women into like a very very dark
(40:55):
septocemic nightmare.
Speaker 5 (40:57):
Yeah, the dark place that we're going as a coffin.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
Yeah yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (41:01):
But even should he lose, which you know hope, there's
still twenty two states where abortion is outlawed or severely restricted,
and these places are becoming care deserts. Like medical residents.
My extremely sexy partner is a medical resident, so I
(41:22):
know more about the state of medicine than I otherwise would.
But like residents don't want to do their residencies in
states with abortion restrictions, they're like.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
Right, given a choice, gynecological providers just aren't practicing there anymore.
Like even if you know, even your primary focus is
not abortions, or even if your primary focus is not
you know, pregnancy care, they just don't want to They
just don't want to work there.
Speaker 4 (41:47):
Well, it's also first of all that, but second of all,
it's like, if you're in the er, you're going to
experience pregnancy losss It happens in one in five pregnancy, right.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
So they're choosing to work in states where they're not
going to go to jail for doing medicine.
Speaker 4 (41:58):
Yeah, Like they don't to incur the moral injury of
not being able to apply the standard of care to
patients in extremely common situations such as incomplete miscarriage and
you know, pregnancy loss, whether you know self induced or
just like miscarriage is super common and nobody talks about it.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
It's more common than we an Ectopic pregnancy is so
much more common than people realize. Like there are so
many things that your body can do to betray you
that you need a doctor help.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
With just ordinary pregnancy.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
And then after the baby is born, then your lustrous
hair all falls out.
Speaker 4 (42:32):
Yeah, like ordinary pregnancy is so fraught with like weird
body horror. Like, but anyway, that's besides the point.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Whatever.
Speaker 4 (42:40):
The point is someone presents with abdominal pain in the
er and it turns out to be an ectopic pregnancy,
and like you can't do standard of care like dilation
and cure tash procedures without checking with the hospital lawyer.
Like that is a really bad position a care provider
(43:00):
to be in. So when you have these fundamentally unscientific laws,
right that are produced by people who don't know anything
about pregnancy and are like very intentionally ambiguous so that
cautious institutions will sort of interpret them at maximally interpret them,
Like the life of the mother, how dead does she
(43:21):
have to be?
Speaker 5 (43:22):
First?
Speaker 3 (43:22):
Yeah, she has to be almost dead, right, and then
sometimes she winds up dying because almost dead is tough
to judge, Like, it just winds up this grotesque sort
of farce of medicine, and very directly like residents don't
want to train, doctors don't want to practice in these places,
and so you.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
Know, right, so this ends up killing more people than
just the ones hemorrhaging in the parking lot. There are
people who have completely unrelated problems who are now unable
to access unrelated kinds of care because the doctors just aren't.
Speaker 4 (43:54):
There, yeah, Or people who have ordinary wanted pregnancies who
can't access neonatal care, who have to drive hours and
hours and hours to like get checkups, like you know,
I mean, human reproduction is like a pretty major part
of like life.
Speaker 5 (44:09):
And a lot of people are doing it.
Speaker 4 (44:11):
Yeah, like it's sort of how you know, it's just
people do it all the time, and like not being
able to access medical care around like the entire spectrum
of like reproduction is pretty catastrophic. But yeah, it also
impacts all the people not engaging in reproduction at this
moment in time, like doctors who are just like fuck this,
(44:31):
I'm not wearing out an er in Tennessee, you know,
because I want to be able to treat patients.
Speaker 5 (44:36):
Without a lawyer in the room.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, I mean.
Speaker 4 (44:39):
And then there are doctors who are bigots and doctors
who are happily on board with abortion bands. But like,
do you want that to be the only doctor in
your county?
Speaker 3 (44:47):
I don't think so.
Speaker 4 (44:49):
You know, it's just it's a really grim situation. And
I just like, I'm such an absolutist about bodily autonomy.
It's like, if you don't own your body, you are
not a full citizen, period of story. Like if if
a major organ in your body is treated as a
controlled substance, like, you are not a full and equal
citizen with rights, which I would like to be.
Speaker 5 (45:11):
I aspire to it.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
Yeah, so I want to ask you one more question
about your book, and I will let you go.
Speaker 5 (45:17):
I told you that I wouldn't keep you very long,
and I lied.
Speaker 4 (45:21):
But it's like, it's just because I like talking to you.
So it's I think I've done the majority of the topics.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
You can't.
Speaker 4 (45:28):
You can't be like, oh, it's about your book, which
you should buy listeners.
Speaker 5 (45:36):
Pre order it now wherever you buy your books.
Speaker 4 (45:38):
And if you like the delcent tones of my voice,
which are I shouldn't have you to narrate in my
audience books, you brush that passage.
Speaker 5 (45:46):
I'm a professional talker now, yeah.
Speaker 4 (45:47):
Yeah, Well I narrated the audio book and then was
like why did I write such complicated sentences?
Speaker 3 (45:53):
Afterwards?
Speaker 2 (45:54):
So now that I read my own writing like on
a regular basis out loud, which is new for me, right,
you know, I have my podcast and I'm writing my
little scripts and then I'm reading into a little microphone.
Now that I struggle with that. I noticed while I
was reading your book that oh I wouldn't be able
to read this out loud. I know, where would I breathe?
I know it was because I write like that too,
(46:15):
and it's something I'm like really grappling with right now.
Speaker 4 (46:17):
She's like, call me ten clubs, Talia. I'm like, ah, fuck,
this sentence is this paragraph? This sentence is a paragraph.
Stop it.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
Like I really really lost, really lost momentum on that one.
Speaker 4 (46:27):
Yeah, I know, but like I managed to get through it.
And if you if you enjoy the dulcae sounds of
my voice, you can hear it for like, I don't know,
eight hours or whatever.
Speaker 3 (46:37):
I assume weird being like listen to my voice.
Speaker 5 (46:40):
But you know, invite me into your mind.
Speaker 4 (46:43):
Yeah, but I do think it's nice as an author
to read your audiobook because I can like get mad
and like, you know, emphasize stuff that I think is important.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
And also I'm a.
Speaker 4 (46:54):
Theater kid, like, like I don't have many opportunities to
perform and it is a performance and it's it's fun.
Speaker 5 (47:02):
But yeah, and that comes out the same time as
the physical book.
Speaker 4 (47:06):
Yes, it comes out audio ebook, physical book with a
cool snake on it.
Speaker 5 (47:12):
Oh yeah, Oh, I guess this is an audio medium.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
The listener can't see that I'm showing the cool cover.
Speaker 4 (47:18):
Yeah, it's got a cool snake, a red and black
snake on the cover. I've named him Rocco, but he
has a cross for a tongue. If you're looking for
a book to give to the metal head in your life,
oh yeah, it's pretty metal. Metal heads, atheists, degenerates.
Speaker 3 (47:35):
Everyone is going to love this book.
Speaker 5 (47:37):
It's perfect for everyone.
Speaker 4 (47:39):
And if you're light on cash flow, want it for
supporting India authors is ask your library to stock it
or your local bookstore because library orders are really important
and you can just like put in a request in
your library system and that is super helpful.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
Hell yeah, everybody go to your library's website right now
and request that they purchase a copy of Wild Faith
by Talia Lavin.
Speaker 5 (48:03):
Yeah, talywhere else can people find you online?
Speaker 3 (48:07):
So I have a newsletter. It's on button down.
Speaker 4 (48:10):
I left some stack because they were like We're never
gonna sensor Nazis, but we will sensor porn. And I
was like, I don't like your priorities, so I left
for button Down. So it's buttondown dot com slash the
sword in the sandwich, or if you just google the
sword and the sandwich comes up. Most Tuesdays I write
about like the horrific state of politics, et cetera, And
then Fridays I write an essay about a different sandwich
(48:34):
on Wikipedia's list of notable sandwiches, and so far I've
written one hundred and eleven sandwiches.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
The sandwich content alone is worth the price of admission.
You need to find out about these sandwiches.
Speaker 3 (48:48):
I mean it just and I get really deep into
the history and the provenance and like I'm like, ah,
the shifting of peoples led to this sandwich, So I
get really deep into it. And then you.
Speaker 4 (49:01):
Can also find me on Blue Sky, where I most
of the time now because Twitter is just like robots
and Nazis and Nazi robots, where I'm at swords Jew.
I'm still on Vishy Twitter as Mobi Dick Energy. And
you know, if you want to say hi or invite
me to speak at your synagogue or bookstore I'm at
(49:22):
Talia l even writes at gmail dot com. Or church
if you're like cool. Yeah, if it's like a cool church, yeah,
you show up and they pass you a snake.
Speaker 3 (49:33):
Yeah, exactly. Oh god, I didn't do enough speaking at
times for this book.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
Well, Tally, thank you so much for coming on today again.
The book is Wild Faith by Talia Lavin, and you
can pre order it now wherever books are sold, and
you should request it from your library.
Speaker 4 (49:50):
Yeah, we stand civic services, and I'm a huge fan
of public libraries and also of Molly Conger. So thanks
for having me on and take care, Bye bye.
Speaker 5 (50:07):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 3 (50:18):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
You can now find sources for It Could Happen here
listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
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Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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