0:00

Hello, friends in the podcast universe. It's

0:02

Anne here. In

0:06

this hour, we are going to be mixing together

0:08

two things you're not supposed to talk about over

0:10

dinner. Religion and

0:12

politics. Specifically, evangelical

0:15

Christianity and former President

0:17

Donald Trump. Last

0:19

time around, he won 84% of

0:21

the white evangelical vote. Lately,

0:23

he's been leaning even more deeply

0:25

into the rhetoric of Christian nationalists.

0:28

So who are they? And what's the

0:30

role in the evangelical church? We'll

0:33

be talking with some Southern Baptists today,

0:35

whose views may actually surprise you.

0:38

They surprised me. So yes, religion

0:41

and politics are on the table. But

0:43

don't worry, this is going to be nothing

0:46

like your annoying uncle at Thanksgiving. Stay

0:49

tuned. How great is this hour? It's

1:19

to the best of our knowledge, I'm Anne Strange-Hamps. Capital.

1:42

Oh! January

1:49

6th was an unprecedented day of political

1:51

violence for the United States. But

1:53

can it happen again? Yeah,

1:56

we had just... How do

1:58

we make sense of the apocalyptic

2:00

rhetoric? of Christian nationalism that inspired

2:02

so many of the insurrectionists. Do

2:04

you like that company? Do you

2:06

like it? No, that's fine. Well,

2:09

let's make some coffee and meet a

2:11

journalist who's been tracking the fusion

2:13

of Christianity and right-wing politics. My

2:19

name's Jeff Charlotte. I'm sitting here with

2:21

a copy of my most

2:23

recent book, The Undertow, Scenes from a

2:25

Slow Civil War, sitting

2:27

here in my dining room, sitting here in this

2:30

kind of lovely blue bubble of Vermont, although not

2:32

as much of a bubble as people. Oh,

2:37

do you want me to close this window? Yeah,

2:40

that's probably a good idea. Yeah. As

2:42

Steve Falson sat down with Jeff Charlotte, he

2:44

wanted to know about that subtitle of his

2:46

book, about civil war and

2:48

whether Charlotte means that literally. I

2:57

don't think we're going to erupt into

3:00

a reprise of the 1860s,

3:02

the blue versus the gray.

3:04

We founded America on God.

3:06

Why may this man president? I

3:10

think we exist in

3:12

a situation of simmering

3:15

violence. Some of

3:17

it institutionalized. I just

3:19

saw recently someone saying, well, there was

3:21

no political violence related

3:23

deaths in the year after 2021. I

3:27

think that has a lot to do

3:29

with how you define political violence. I

3:32

see a civil war coming. I do.

3:35

God is behind us and that's what it's

3:37

about. That's why we're here. Remember,

3:41

every communist regime throughout history has

3:43

tried to stamp out the churches

3:45

just like every fascist regime

3:48

has tried to co-op them. And

3:50

in America, the radical left is trying to do

3:52

both at the same time. There's never been anything

3:55

like this. I'm

3:58

interested in all of it. iconography that people

4:01

adorn their trucks to cars

4:03

to houses and flags to t-shirts

4:06

threatening violence Christianity

4:09

is the true religion Almost

4:12

every week somewhere is a

4:14

group of proud boys or oath keepers

4:16

or three percenters or Local

4:18

knuckleheads and they're lining up

4:21

outside a library a school sometimes

4:23

a hospital Maybe it's anti-vax.

4:25

Maybe it's a drag show often.

4:28

They're open carrying And they

4:30

have an open fire We're

4:38

striking matches right and flicking them into the grass

4:40

and so far the fire hasn't caught and so

4:42

we're saying I Guess

4:45

it's fine Let's

4:47

keep striking matches Charlotte

4:50

says the great match thrower of our

4:52

time is former president Donald Trump his

4:55

rhetoric Charlotte argues incited actual

4:57

violence on January 6th They

5:02

want to silence me because I will

5:04

never let them silence you Lately

5:07

Trump speeches have taken a surprising

5:09

turn. He's now explicitly

5:12

appealing to Christians They're not after

5:14

me. They're after you especially to

5:16

the fears of evangelical Christians I

5:19

just happen to be standing in the

5:22

way I'm excited because he's doing stuff for

5:24

the Christian stuff Donald

5:26

Trump won 84% of the white

5:29

evangelical vote in 2020 and

5:31

to shore up that base He's now

5:33

moving beyond conservative Christian values to

5:36

Christian nationalism They want to

5:38

do to end our causes with a debt which

5:40

we should be able to make, she has

5:42

the name and cover them

5:44

up with social justice flags Many

5:49

Christian nationalists believe that the American

5:51

Constitution was inspired by God and they call

5:53

the United States a Christian country They also advocate ending

5:55

the separation of church and state They'll

6:00

find the truth out. The

6:03

Jesus is recovering a Christian nation.

6:06

Upon taking office, I will create a

6:08

new federal task force on fighting anti-Christian

6:11

violence. Let's

6:16

go back to Jeff and

6:18

Steve for a far-reaching conversation

6:20

about Christian nationalism, political violence,

6:22

and how Donald Trump has

6:24

tapped into various threads of

6:27

American evangelicalism. The

6:33

first was the prosperity gospel, this

6:35

idea that God wants you to be rich.

6:38

And prosperity preachers, how do they show you that God wants

6:40

to be rich? Well, look how rich they are. Look at

6:42

my fancy car. Look at my beautiful suit. Trump's perfect for

6:44

this role, right? And that's what he said. We're going to

6:47

win so much, you're going to be tired of winning. That's

6:50

part one. Campaign two is

6:52

what I call a kind

6:54

of Americanized, bastardized, Gnostic gospel.

6:57

This is an ancient

6:59

heresy, this idea that the God

7:01

you see is not the real

7:03

God, but just a front, and

7:05

that the real wisdom is behind that. And

7:08

only a few understand this, but

7:10

there's this vast bureaucratic apparatus of the church

7:12

that's trying to hide it from you, the

7:15

deep state. But if you're an

7:17

initiate, if you have learned QAnon, or maybe you've

7:19

just picked up some, you know, what's what, you

7:21

know about the vaccine and so on, conspiracies,

7:25

dark secrets, as Trump himself says, not

7:28

a key point, when he starts, instead of just

7:30

peddling the conspiracy theory, kind of believing

7:32

it himself, right? You know, in

7:34

the book, I've been covering Trump since 2016,

7:36

going to the rallies, always looking

7:38

at them, not in terms of horse race

7:40

politics, but more in terms of actual performance.

7:43

What is the performance here? Tell me about that,

7:45

because I know you, as you

7:47

say, you've gone to a lot of Trump rallies, you don't

7:50

sit in the media section, the part that's

7:52

sort of fenced off, where the crowd and

7:54

Trump himself jeers at the media. You

7:56

sit with the crowd there. What's

7:58

that like? I've been a journalist for a long time. for 30 years,

8:00

I think I've had a press pass once in my

8:02

life and I was ashamed. Look,

8:05

it's important for reporters to go and do

8:07

those things and so on, but there's also

8:10

important for us as writers and especially I

8:12

think in this moment of authoritarian threat or

8:14

even the F word, if we want to

8:16

say that this is a fascist movement, to

8:19

say, how do we tell political stories? And

8:21

I think that has to do with not just

8:23

paying attention to the broadcast, right? What

8:26

the politician is saying, but the reception. How

8:29

is this felt in the crowd? You

8:31

go to a Trump rally 2016, you go to

8:33

one in New Hampshire right now, the

8:35

press will be putting a metal pen in

8:37

the middle. And it always stunned me that

8:40

my colleagues would agree to

8:42

do this because Trump, a man well versed

8:44

in wrestling, would use them as a prop.

8:46

There's a moment in every rally, he says,

8:49

look at those scum back there, the enemy,

8:51

the people and the crowd turns around and

8:53

you can't see this on radio and that's

8:55

appropriate, they're all flying the bird, two fingers

8:58

up and so on and screaming. They're having

9:00

a good time because the press is

9:02

being used as what in wrestling is

9:04

called the heel. Why

9:07

they keep agreeing to be the heel?

9:09

I don't know. But what

9:11

happens when you go into the

9:13

crowd, you get a much greater

9:15

appreciation for Trump as

9:17

a performer. You see his control,

9:19

his ability to move

9:22

laughter or fear. I

9:24

remember a rally I went to and I write about

9:26

in the book in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and

9:29

a prolonged story of

9:32

violence talking about

9:34

how the cities are deliberately releasing undocumented,

9:39

illegal rapists into

9:42

the countryside to terrify people

9:45

and describing decapitations, disembowelments. I mean, this

9:47

is all what Trump is saying? This

9:50

is what Trump is saying. It's a

9:52

horror movie. And what

9:54

was the coverage of that rally? Trump

9:57

made a joke about maybe he would stay for

9:59

12 more years. And that

10:01

was just Trump, you know, with his fishing

10:03

rod. He knew how to bait the press.

10:05

That's the line they're going to do. And

10:08

there's no coverage of that.

10:10

Or even Trump's post indictment speeches.

10:12

If we look at it as

10:14

just theater, it's a little bit like,

10:17

have you ever been to the theater? Has it moved

10:19

you? I mean, obviously you're describing a

10:22

gifted performer, but you

10:24

also reject the idea of this as

10:26

just theater. It does sound like theater.

10:28

It is theater. It's not just theater.

10:30

Okay. It's the just that

10:32

is the reassurance to us. Don't worry.

10:34

That's not real. Think about

10:36

the most powerful performance you've seen. Think

10:39

about the stories as Joan Didion

10:41

says, if we tell ourselves stories in order to live, the

10:43

stories that make you who you are, that's not just theater.

10:45

That's theater. That's powerful. And if we

10:48

recognize Trump, and I know this is

10:50

a controversial term, and I will defend

10:52

it historically as part of a fascist

10:54

movement, not a fascist regime, a

10:56

fascist movement. Theater is

10:59

the essence of fascism, not ideology.

11:02

Theater and performance. Let

11:04

me ask you what you're doing here. So you

11:07

go to Trump rallies, you go

11:09

to these extremely conservative churches,

11:11

here are the sermons, you

11:13

hang out with QAnon followers,

11:15

militia leaders with big stashes

11:17

of guns, white supremacists.

11:20

What are you looking for? What are you trying to figure out?

11:23

The undercurrent of the undertow is

11:25

grief. And grief over

11:28

a number of things. And I

11:30

think that living in this

11:32

very broken country, at this time of

11:35

a disintegrating climate, through

11:38

the pandemic, has filled

11:40

us all with a lot of grief.

11:42

And I think grief, it is unprocessed.

11:44

Curdles. We lost, I think

11:46

a lot of white people, lost

11:49

a privilege of some naivete. A

11:52

lot of right-wing white people have been losing some white

11:54

privilege. And I think we make a mistake if we

11:56

say, well, and I do, I

11:58

could, you shouldn't. thing to get rid of, but

12:01

it's still a loss. You started

12:03

this whole business, you're reporting, covering

12:06

religion, right? Not politics, religion.

12:09

You're covering a certain brand

12:11

of very conservative, evangelical Christianity,

12:13

I guess, Christian nationalism maybe.

12:17

What has changed specifically sort of

12:19

in that version of Christianity

12:21

then to now? Well,

12:23

I would say actually that term Christian

12:26

nationalism, which is a controversial term, although

12:28

less so now, Marjorie Taylor

12:30

Greene says, I'm a Christian nationalist, more

12:32

and more right-wing politicians are just owning

12:34

and saying, yes, yes, that's the idea.

12:37

What Trump did is really important in

12:39

the history of American religion. Trump

12:42

comes down the Golden Escalator in 2015, and

12:44

I say, here he comes bringing a fascist

12:46

aesthetic, the strong man, will it

12:48

be received? It was.

12:50

And I think people say,

12:52

it's not fascism because there's no jack boots.

12:54

Remember, it's an aesthetic movement. It's not 1936

12:57

Germany, but that cult of

12:59

personality, that's a really key difference.

13:01

And that takes it out of

13:04

evangelicals, most of

13:06

them line up in support. And

13:08

yet Trump, it's always

13:11

kind of mystified me why all these thrice

13:14

married. Yeah. Doesn't

13:16

seem to have a pious bone

13:18

in his body. Why this very

13:21

conservative, evangelical brand of Christianity has rallied

13:23

around him. So Christian nationalism

13:25

is different than evangelical Christianity. You go to

13:28

a Trump route. Most of the people I

13:30

meet in this book, except for those at

13:32

churches, don't go to church. Evangelicals,

13:35

most of them line up in support.

13:38

Each rally would open with some of

13:40

the hardest right preachers I've ever seen.

13:42

And people would be cheering. These were

13:45

angry preachers. And I would talk to

13:47

them. They weren't churchgoers, but they loved

13:49

the idea of it. Now, I've reported

13:51

a Russian as well. And

13:53

Russia has some of the lowest church attendance

13:56

in the world, but they

13:58

love Putin. invocation

14:01

of a Russian faith, the Russian

14:03

Orthodox faith. That's Christian nationalism. And

14:06

some people say, that's not real

14:08

Christianity. That is one

14:10

of them. There are others, and there

14:12

are beautiful ones. But that is one

14:14

of them. In Omaha, Sunday morning, and

14:16

when I'm out reporting, on Sunday mornings,

14:18

I go to churches because I want

14:20

to see what's happening. It's

14:22

called Lord of Host Church. The

14:24

Pastor Hank Cuneman is a regular

14:28

on the show called Flashpoint, a

14:30

Christian-right show. Trump has also been

14:32

a guest. It is an openly,

14:34

I would describe it as an openly pro-hot

14:36

Civil War show. And Pastor

14:39

Hank, who's a fantastic preacher, he's good

14:41

at what he does. With

14:43

this large congregation, which again,

14:45

against odds, is much

14:48

more diverse than Steve we

14:50

met at a Unitarian

14:52

church in Woodstock, Vermont, which

14:54

was almost all white. This was not. Preached

14:58

a Civil War sermon, a violent Civil War

15:00

sermon, thy rod a nice staff. He said,

15:03

quoting Psalm 23, thy rod

15:05

is thy gun, and accompanied it

15:07

with a weird sexual hip thrust.

15:09

This is a preacher who is just calling

15:11

for violence to the whole

15:14

congregation. There are so

15:16

many militia churches now. And when I say militia church,

15:18

I mean, I go to a

15:20

church in Yuba City, California, you

15:23

know, on the Wednesday night is women's

15:25

night, and Monday night is youth night.

15:27

Tuesday night is militia new recruit night.

15:30

This is the church listeners might've seen

15:32

because a little video clip of it

15:34

went viral. They presented General Mike Flynn,

15:36

Trump's former national security advisor and a

15:38

leader of the QAnon idea.

15:41

They presented him with a customized

15:43

AR-15 on stage. And that

15:46

little clip went viral. What people

15:49

miss was that they also presented

15:51

their own pastor with a customized

15:53

AR-15. His had Joshua 1.9 in

15:56

Hebrew carved into it. And Joshua

15:58

1.9 is people, remember, the book

16:00

of Joshua, and this Jericho, we're going

16:02

to surround the city, we're going to blow the

16:04

horns seven times. It's a difficult

16:07

work of scripture because then God

16:10

commands Joshua to go in and

16:12

kill everybody. It's a genocidal text.

16:14

Now, scripture demands our

16:17

interpretation. It demands our engagement. You don't

16:19

have to read it like that, but

16:21

you can. And that's why I saw

16:24

Proud Boys wearing Joshua 1.9 shirts

16:27

with guns, guns with Joshua 1.9 on

16:29

it. It's a very popular battle verse.

16:32

So here he is, the pastor

16:34

with his AR-15, talking about

16:36

January 6, breaking his heart.

16:38

We seize the castle and then we

16:40

loft it, but not

16:42

all hope is lost because blood is coming. But

16:46

there are theologians working on this. I

16:49

mentioned briefly in this book a guy named

16:51

Lance Walnau, who in 2016 had

16:53

a bestseller called God's Chaos

16:55

Candidate. And Trump, he said,

16:58

is here as a wrecking ball. Trump is

17:00

here to destroy. Remember when I said about

17:02

Joshua 1.9, the book of

17:04

Joshua, Joshua is ordered to take Jericho and

17:06

kill everyone in it. Well,

17:08

that doesn't seem very God-like, but

17:11

you go to churches now, the Lord

17:13

of hosts in Omaha, Church of

17:16

Glad Tidings in California. There

17:19

are many more. And they say now is a

17:21

time of war theology. And this is

17:23

different than when you were doing this reporting 20

17:25

years ago. It really- I mean, sort of like

17:27

the guns weren't in churches back then. There

17:30

was some, but there wasn't Civil

17:32

War talk. Civil War talk

17:35

was so, so fringe. This

17:37

is the mood. And in Omaha, I

17:40

sit through this sermon. There's always

17:42

been in the past, like, oh, there's

17:44

no mistake that you came to this

17:46

church, this compound, whatever, and so on.

17:48

Obviously, God sent you. Or maybe you're

17:50

not going to be converted, but it doesn't matter

17:52

because God's going to use you to carry our

17:54

words out. Now they don't care. I'm trying to-

17:57

The parking lot, which is a public parking lot,

17:59

I'm trying to- to three women who

18:01

had driven four hours from Ohio to be there.

18:03

They're talking about civil war, looking

18:06

forward to it. And an

18:08

usher and a gunman in full

18:10

armor come out. I thought the

18:12

gunman was an off-duty cop, and turns out

18:15

he wasn't. And it's just this little exchange.

18:17

You can't talk here, but I'm just talking

18:19

in this public space. No, you can't. My

18:23

heart is beating. My blood pressure is high. The

18:25

usher's blood pressure is high. There's his veins. He's

18:27

got a tattoo of a girl praying on his

18:29

neck. And you can see the vein pulsing

18:32

through. And I've

18:34

been in enough situations simmering with

18:36

violence to know that, you

18:39

know, grade school boys puff out

18:41

their chest and stick out their chins. Usually

18:44

that means you're okay. Because if someone's really going

18:46

to hit you, they don't stick

18:48

out their chin. This guy is curling

18:51

in his chest. This guy is grinning.

18:54

That's scary. He's burying his teeth.

18:57

And I just saw my miscalculation. I

19:00

saw my miscalculation that I thought that this was

19:03

still, I could talk my way

19:05

through this. And I said, Oh, these people are,

19:07

I don't know if they're going to shoot

19:09

me. They're ready to hit me. And

19:11

I just backed up.

19:15

I get into my car, turn the air conditioning

19:17

on, and I felt this move to

19:19

check the glove compartment because I'm driving across the

19:21

country. I had two purposes. One,

19:24

to investigate this myth. Two,

19:29

to go to Colorado, where my

19:32

stepmother had died, and

19:34

to pick up a portion

19:36

of her ashes from her

19:38

son that I was going to distribute and

19:40

then drive across the country. So I'm driving

19:42

across the country. Now you can't help but

19:44

think hashes to ashes, dust to dust. It

19:47

just suddenly felt like I had, my

19:50

calling here was not to stay and

19:52

be confrontational with that. My calling was

19:55

to mourn. My calling was

19:58

in a sense to carry. those

20:00

ashes literally. And

20:02

to ask people about why they believe

20:04

civil war was a good idea and

20:07

to listen to those answers with

20:10

empathy, not sympathy. Jeff

20:23

Charlotte is the author of The Undertow,

20:25

Scenes from a Slow Civil War.

20:28

And that was Steve Paulson talking with him.

20:36

Coming up, think all evangelicals are

20:38

the same? Stay

20:40

tuned for some conversations that may surprise you.

20:50

One of my favorite medieval

20:52

prayers is of a

20:54

woman named Marjorie Kemp. I talk

20:56

about her in the book. I talk about her. She's in the 15th

20:58

century. She is a

21:00

woman of amazing faith. There's

21:09

this moment where she

21:11

finds herself surrounded

21:13

by people who are very

21:15

unhappy with

21:18

her. And in fact, she fears for her life.

21:21

And it's just this moment where

21:23

she suddenly she stops and she

21:26

looks out and she

21:28

says, God, you brought me to this place

21:30

for love of you. Be

21:32

with me and have mercy

21:34

on us. That

21:40

has become a prayer that I pray all

21:42

the time. God, you've brought us here.

21:44

Be with us

21:46

and have mercy. Beth

22:02

Allison Barr lives in Waco, Texas, and

22:05

she is what's popularly called a born-again

22:07

Christian, a Southern Baptist

22:09

who was raised evangelical, married a

22:11

pastor, and had two children. And

22:14

if that makes you think you know something about

22:16

Beth Allison Barr, well, I

22:18

should also tell you she's a feminist professor

22:21

of medieval history at Baylor University and

22:23

author of a book that is not winning her

22:25

many friends in the evangelical world. It's

22:27

called The Making of Biblical Womanhood,

22:30

How the Subjugation of Women Became

22:32

Gospel Truth. I

22:34

like an apology in advance. I

22:36

grew up secular, so a lot of

22:38

the world that you're describing is not

22:40

so familiar to me. But

22:43

I think I wanted to start with what

22:46

you love about your church and your

22:48

faith, what you loved about it growing

22:50

up. Oh, yes. So

22:52

I still identify in faith. I'm still married

22:54

to a Baptist pastor. So

22:56

in fact, I'll be at church tonight. And

22:59

so I think just from that,

23:01

it shows that there's something more

23:04

than just the negative parts that are out

23:06

there and the problems that we see. And

23:09

in fact, I don't think I would have

23:11

written The Making of Biblical Womanhood if I

23:14

didn't love my faith. I

23:16

have very fond memories of the church that

23:18

I grew up in and the church that

23:20

I still am in today. But

23:22

that doesn't make me blind or

23:25

that doesn't make me

23:27

unable to recognize the

23:29

problems that are in it. And

23:33

thinking specifically about the problems in

23:35

the church and the church's

23:37

attitude toward women, when would you say,

23:39

I mean, you grew up in

23:42

your church. At what

23:44

point did you become aware? Do you

23:46

think that boys and

23:48

girls were getting mixed messages, that there were

23:50

very different gender roles and visions of what

23:52

it would mean to be a little girl

23:55

and growing up to be a woman? At

23:57

what point were you aware of that? I

24:00

know now as a historian that

24:02

my experience was at the very

24:04

beginning of the hard center cysts

24:06

In So I actually remember when

24:08

there was a shift in our

24:10

church when I first grew up.

24:12

I remember when I was smaller.

24:14

I remember women be more presence

24:16

and women being more active. It

24:18

so I remembered women been more

24:20

visible And so it was really

24:22

in my early a high school

24:24

years that I began to notice

24:26

more of a cyst and I

24:28

don't realize there had. Been a

24:30

very as liberal determine shift. What happened?

24:32

There was a shift I didn't know

24:35

it at the time. I was a

24:37

teenager in the late eighties early nineties.

24:39

And what I didn't know is that

24:41

about ten years earlier when I was

24:44

four years old, there had been something

24:46

called a conservative resurgence in the Southern

24:48

Baptist World arm. And a goal of

24:50

the conservative resurgence was to take over

24:53

the Southern Baptist Seminaries as well as

24:55

begin to take over the churches and

24:57

start pushing them more towards what they

24:59

called. A biblical understanding of

25:02

gender which was reinforced seen

25:04

mel authority and females subordination

25:06

and this starts trickling into

25:08

the churches. And in fact

25:11

in the nineteen nineties we

25:13

start seen a wave of

25:15

publications coming out that start

25:18

reinforcing what we call this

25:20

biblical womanhood including John Piper

25:22

and when Groot unpublished seen

25:25

their book Recovering Biblical Manhood

25:27

and Womanhood and that frilly

25:29

just. The movement exploded after

25:31

that point. It's such

25:34

a fascinating both history and concept.

25:36

Me because I didn't grow up with

25:38

this idea. So even the phrase biblical

25:40

womanhood. Was new to me? Tell

25:43

me what subsumed at yeah no that's

25:45

a very good Christians. So I've gotten

25:47

a lot of criticism for how I

25:49

define biblical womanhood. I'm not exactly sure

25:51

why, because it's. Pretty. Much the

25:53

way it is defined. It is

25:55

that God created gender roles for

25:57

men and women. Men's gender roles.

26:00

are to lead, women's are to follow

26:02

male leadership, and that's pretty much it.

26:04

That's what biblical womanhood is. And

26:06

if I can quote Dorothy Patterson, whose

26:09

name probably isn't familiar to you, but

26:11

she is the wife of

26:13

one of the major movers

26:15

in the conservative resurgence, and

26:18

her husband is connected

26:20

to Paul Pressler, who's the judge in

26:22

Texas who has all of the sex

26:24

abuse scandals against him right now. But

26:26

she wrote a really significant book

26:29

for pastor's wives. And

26:31

one of the things she said in it is that

26:33

a pastor's wife, the job was to

26:35

hold the ladder for her husband to climb.

26:38

And in some ways, that kind of

26:40

is the image of biblical womanhood, that

26:42

you hold the ladder, you

26:44

hold the family together, you hold the

26:46

ladder so that your husband can be

26:48

successful. Well, the other

26:50

really problematic aspect of this, and

26:53

you write is, women are

26:55

not allowed to lead in

26:57

church. They're not allowed to be pastors. You

27:00

were told not to teach, am I right?

27:02

Yes, that's exactly right. Yeah. I

27:05

think, thinking from

27:07

an outside mindset, I,

27:09

of course, was trained in women's history at the

27:11

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. So I

27:13

was, you know, I had this very disjointed

27:16

world where on the one hand, I was

27:18

an evangelical pastor's wife, and on the other

27:20

hand, I was in the women's studies program

27:22

at Chapel Hill. And so it was really

27:25

interesting. So I kind of saw both sides

27:27

of the coin, I saw what it looked

27:29

like on the outside. And then I also

27:31

saw what was going on on the inside.

27:33

And I think that helped me understand how

27:36

strange it was to make

27:38

an argument that women simply because

27:40

of their gender, because of their

27:42

bodies, that they are not able

27:45

to teach men. And

27:47

I was able to see the danger behind that.

27:49

I mean, if you tell men

27:51

that there's something about women that they

27:53

cannot learn from them, what

27:56

is that telling men about women? And

27:58

what is that telling women? women about their

28:01

own worth. If they

28:03

are told that by design of

28:05

God, their voices don't matter as much

28:07

as men's voices. AMT. Your

28:09

book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood,

28:12

how the subjugation of women became

28:14

gospel truth, first of all, I

28:17

imagine that just that title, you've

28:19

gotten some pushback on

28:21

that. Has it caused a, I don't

28:23

know, kerfuffle in the SBC? AMT. Oh

28:26

yes, I would say I'm a persona non

28:29

grato with Minnie in the SBC. It was

28:31

funny when I was in the archives in

28:33

Nashville, I requested to see

28:35

some files and I received pretty immediate

28:37

rejections. They would not let me in

28:40

to go see their files. AMT. Interesting.

28:42

AMT. My name precedes me in this

28:45

and I know that my name has

28:47

been in the conversation of a lot

28:49

of what's going on. They

28:51

were unable to ignore me, which I'm

28:54

really glad about. But at the

28:56

same time, I don't think any of

28:58

them were willing to listen

29:00

to what I had to say. And

29:02

in fact, since the Making of Biblical Womanhood has

29:05

come out, what we have seen in the Southern

29:07

Baptist Church is we have seen even harder

29:09

stances on women,

29:11

including this, not only can women

29:14

not be senior pastors, but women

29:16

can't carry any pastoral title. Now

29:18

that's sort of what's moving forward.

29:20

It's called the Mike Law Amendment.

29:22

And it's that women should not

29:24

have any sort of pastoral in

29:26

their title. That is about as hard-blind

29:28

as one can get. I think the

29:31

next step moving forward from that is

29:33

this idea that to be biblical women,

29:35

that women should not even

29:37

work outside the home. I mean, I think

29:39

this is kind of the natural progression of

29:42

where this is going if you subsume women

29:44

completely under male leadership. Can

29:46

we talk some about the harm

29:49

that letting patriarchal

29:52

attitudes like this persist in

29:54

any institution? Yes, because

29:57

it's one thing to say to live.

30:00

limit women's roles. But

30:02

when you begin to constrain

30:04

any set of people, it's

30:08

a short walk from subjugation

30:10

to submission to actual

30:13

harm. There's been a

30:15

big sex abuse scandal in

30:17

the SBC and the evangelical movement, as there

30:20

has been in other churches as well. Where

30:23

are things right now with the... There's

30:25

a hashtag church to movement, I think. Yeah,

30:28

no, you're exactly right. And that's one

30:30

of the arguments that I make in

30:32

the making of biblical womanhood. It's one

30:34

that's also gotten me a lot of

30:36

pushback. And I argue that when you

30:38

teach that there is something about any

30:40

group of people that simply because of

30:42

the way they are born, that makes

30:44

them worthy of being under the authority

30:46

of someone else, that is

30:49

dangerous, that it's a dangerous attitude. And

30:52

in fact, that's exactly what we have

30:54

seen. We have seen a system that

30:56

has built on male authority and male

30:58

power and has been

31:00

trained to protect that male authority

31:02

and male power, which means that

31:05

when there are problems, and

31:07

because there aren't any women at the

31:10

table, there aren't any women who are

31:12

involved in these higher decision makings, that

31:14

when there is a problem, the goal

31:17

of the church is to protect the

31:19

pastor and to protect the

31:21

men in leadership instead of to protect the

31:23

victims. And there was in

31:25

the Guidepost Solutions report, which is

31:28

the firm that was hired to investigate

31:30

the sex abuse scandal in the Southern

31:32

Baptist Convention, there is this really horrific

31:34

letter in there where Paige Patterson, who's

31:36

one of the architects of the Southern

31:38

Baptist Convention, he writes telling

31:41

a church how

31:43

to make sure that if they are

31:45

sued for any sort of sex or

31:48

child abuse, that they will win

31:50

that case. And so the concern

31:52

is not about being sued for this. The concern

31:54

is about how to win the case. And so

31:56

he tells them to bring in an outside firm,

31:58

even if they don't agree with them. just to do

32:00

like an hour training module on how to

32:02

protect your children and how to protect against

32:04

sex abusers. And he said, if you do

32:07

that, then that will help. That'll go a

32:09

long way in the court to protect you

32:11

from being sued. That whole

32:13

attitude just shows the problem

32:15

with this. That the

32:17

goal is about protecting systems,

32:20

protecting people in power. Protecting

32:22

men. Protecting men instead

32:24

of protecting the victims, the women and

32:26

the children. And anyone actually who is

32:29

not in that power, it's not all

32:31

men. You know, as we

32:33

know, patriarchy privileges only some men. And

32:35

so anyone who's outside of that privileged power

32:37

is not protected in the system. Well,

32:40

and then women's faith

32:42

held up. There

32:46

were women who were told they should just

32:48

work on forgiving their rapists. That's

32:50

exactly right. Which seems to me

32:52

like such a perversion of a

32:54

woman's faith. When the Making

32:57

of Biblical Womanhood first came out, I had a lot of

32:59

people who were in the church that we were in who

33:01

reached out to me. And I had a

33:03

lot of really good conversations. A lot of them were

33:05

happy to know just what had actually happened, et

33:07

cetera. But I remember this one woman and it really

33:09

surprised me. And when she reached out to me, the

33:11

first thing she asked me, she said, you know, Beth,

33:13

I just have to know, I just have to make

33:15

sure you've forgiven them. Before anything

33:18

else, that was the question I was like,

33:20

yep, this is the world. This is the

33:22

world where what matters most is

33:24

not the harm that has been done,

33:27

but if the people who

33:29

the harm has been done to, they have to have

33:32

the right attitude. They have

33:34

to forgive. I mean, it's so

33:36

damaging, but it is, that

33:38

is what we are taught. And I'll put myself out there and

33:40

that is what we are taught. There

33:42

is a hashtag out there, X, hashtag

33:45

X evangelical. I'm

33:47

curious, what do you say to a

33:50

woman who comes to you and says, I read

33:52

your book, I can't do this anymore.

33:54

I'm leaving the church. Yeah, I

33:57

mostly just tell her, I'm sorry. I'm

34:00

sorry for what has happened to her.

34:02

I'm sorry for the experiences

34:04

that she's had. And

34:06

that I, you know,

34:10

my hope inside is that

34:12

maybe one day she might be

34:16

interested in returning not to that church, but

34:18

to a faith, a different

34:20

sort of faith. But at the

34:22

same time, I totally understand why she's

34:24

walking away. People ask me all

34:26

the time why I didn't walk away. And I think part of it is because

34:28

I- I think that was gonna be my next question. Was it? Yeah,

34:31

well, I mean, so I'll pre-empt you on that. I mean,

34:34

part of it's because I'm a historian. And

34:37

I know that the Christianity

34:40

that we see in modern

34:42

American evangelicalism is a very

34:44

small blip in

34:46

the long river

34:49

of Christian history. And

34:52

I work with people whose

34:54

faith is deep and strong

34:58

and all the way back to the very

35:00

earliest moments of Christianity. And

35:03

I read their faith and how

35:05

it makes them, it

35:07

makes them better that they believe that God is

35:09

calling them something to bigger and better than this

35:12

world. And it enables

35:14

me to know that God

35:16

is bigger than white

35:18

American evangelicalism. And so

35:20

I think that that is part of it.

35:22

You know, I've never had a faith crisis

35:24

through this whole thing. What I have had

35:27

is a crisis with how people have portrayed

35:29

the faith. And

35:31

so I think that's where my beef is.

35:34

But as for my faith itself, being

35:36

a historian has helped me stay strong

35:39

in it. That's

35:42

beautiful. Near the

35:44

end of your book, you say that

35:46

when you finish classes, finish teaching, you

35:49

often end with kind of a

35:51

benediction. What do you say to

35:53

your students? And what would you say to

35:55

us, to our listeners? Yes, it's sort of

35:57

funny how I ended my book with that.

36:00

But what I always say to my students is I

36:02

say go be free and that

36:04

really is what I want women in

36:07

The evangelical church as well as

36:09

beyond. I mean patriarchy hurts all

36:11

of us and Patriarchy

36:15

hurts men too and it's just

36:17

really time for all of us to be free And

36:19

so I that actually is my prayer

36:21

for beyond the church as well Thank

36:24

you so much. Yeah, it's just a pleasure talking

36:26

with you. Thank you very very much Thanks

36:35

Beth Allison Barr is a professor of medieval

36:38

history at Baylor University And

36:40

her book is called the making of biblical

36:42

womanhood how the subjugation of

36:45

women became gospel truth What

36:53

is it like to be a black

36:55

southern Baptist pastor We'll

36:57

have a conversation about a struggle a

37:00

departure and a deepened love for Jesus

37:03

It's to the best of our knowledge from

37:05

Wisconsin Public Radio and PRX

37:12

Thinking about what Beth Allison Barr

37:14

said about patriarchy and sexism and

37:16

the Southern Baptist Church or SBC

37:19

I realized there's another issue inside that church that

37:21

we need to talk about race

37:25

So a little history first the

37:27

Southern Baptist Convention was formed in 1845 in

37:30

Georgia for Christian Evangelists

37:33

who owned slaves and who

37:35

wanted a church that supported slavery After

37:38

the Civil War and well into

37:40

the 20th century the SBC endorsed

37:42

racial segregation and opposed interracial marriage

37:46

Since then the church has formally

37:48

repented of racism and it's apologized

37:50

to African Americans But

37:52

it is still predominantly a white church with

37:55

an 85% white membership Accessible

37:58

largest prominent denouement in the

38:00

U.S. So that's the background.

38:03

Charles van Rooy-Kane, who produced this hour, wanted

38:05

to talk with someone for whom the Southern

38:08

Baptist stance on race is personal.

38:11

Reverend John Onewuchakwa, the son

38:13

of Nigerian immigrants and co-founder

38:15

of Atlanta's Cornerstone Church. Five

38:19

years after opening its doors, Reverend

38:21

Onewuchakwa and the entire congregation of more

38:23

than 400 people officially

38:26

left the Southern Baptist Convention. Charles

38:29

van Rooy-Kane sat down with him to find out

38:31

what happened. Why don't you take

38:33

me back. What led you to start the

38:36

Cornerstone Church in Atlanta? Yeah.

38:39

I had been pastoring for eight years

38:41

at the time. So at

38:43

22 years old, started

38:46

seminary, helped to plan a church

38:48

out in Denton, Texas. At 25

38:50

years old, moved from

38:52

Denton to Atlanta, Georgia with

38:55

25 other people to be the

38:57

co-pastor at a church

38:59

plant there. When

39:01

we got to Atlanta, the

39:03

church that we planted had

39:05

grown substantially to a good

39:08

size, but I think the

39:10

segment of our church that we missed

39:12

out on was the

39:14

lower income demographic,

39:16

right? So a couple of years

39:19

prior to us

39:21

starting that church. So this is 2012. There

39:23

was a group of folks that were like,

39:25

hey, there is this place that nobody else

39:27

wants to go to. And

39:29

we just have this heart to be a part

39:31

of this communal rebuilding

39:34

project. So this

39:36

group moved in, paid

39:39

full rent in Section 8

39:41

housing. They cut kids

39:43

hair that lived across the street. They

39:46

made birthday cakes for people that were

39:48

outside. They were a part of community

39:50

cleanups and they found themselves

39:53

in a place where they had achieved such

39:55

a good reputation with people that were

39:58

on the inside of the community. that

40:00

you have folks that lived in the West End

40:02

that would say things like, listen, man, we really

40:04

don't mess with Christianity

40:06

or Jesus or all this stuff because of

40:09

the experience that they had in the past.

40:11

But they say, yo, there's something about y'all,

40:13

the way that y'all love us and love

40:16

one another, that they're like, yo, if y'all were

40:18

to start a church here, we

40:20

would explore and we would

40:22

come. And so that was

40:24

what started the conversations of

40:27

what does it look like to start a church in

40:29

a place like that. JS. So

40:31

when you started the church, you became a

40:34

member of the Southern Baptist Convention. JS. Yeah.

40:36

JS. Why joined the Southern Baptist? What were the

40:38

reasons? JS. I didn't know

40:40

much about the SBC at the

40:42

time, except for the fact that we

40:44

had a friend that was involved at the time and

40:47

said, all you may know is

40:49

that they used to own people. But he's

40:51

like, no, things have changed. It's come a

40:53

long way. There's a group that's really trying

40:55

to make things right. We got

40:57

involved with the group because it seemed

40:59

like the people that we knew had

41:02

a genuine desire to partner

41:05

and to come

41:07

alongside. There was a group of

41:09

people that all they really wanted

41:11

was diversity. And it

41:13

was more than enough for them to get

41:15

black faces in the

41:18

joint. But there was a smaller

41:20

segment of folks that it seemed like they

41:23

really wanted solidarity.

41:26

They really wanted to help

41:28

in the work that we tried to do. So

41:30

we found some good relationships and

41:33

friendships. And in some ways, the group

41:35

was very supportive of the work that

41:37

we were trying to do. JS. I

41:39

think it's important to hear the history

41:42

of Southern Baptists. I think it's very

41:44

important to this story. JS.

41:46

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So the geography

41:48

in the name is tough because it's

41:51

misleading. Southern was not just about

41:53

geography. It was an ideology.

41:55

So you had a group of folks that were like, oh,

41:57

no, no, no, no, no, no. We think

41:59

it's... It's okay to tell

42:02

people about the freedom

42:04

that's found in Jesus while

42:06

we still have black and

42:08

brown folks in chains.

42:10

So at the end of the day, we're

42:12

going to form our own group where we

42:14

own slaves. And so in

42:17

May of 1845, the

42:19

Southern Baptist Convention was

42:21

formed primarily

42:23

around the issue of

42:26

slavery. And

42:29

then of course, as you go forward through Jim

42:31

Crow, through the 1960s, that group, and let's

42:35

be clear, that group is the largest Protestant

42:38

denomination in America. It's a pretty big group.

42:41

The Southern Baptist were against interracial

42:43

marriage. They were against the Civil Rights Act.

42:45

They were against all sorts of

42:47

things. You guys are fired

42:50

up. You were serving the poor. You're saving souls.

42:52

You're living in the community. It must have been pretty

42:54

beautiful. But the measurement people

42:57

you're interacting with who were like, eh.

43:00

The interesting thing about being black

43:02

in America, anywhere that

43:04

you go, any organization that you're involved

43:06

with, there's folks like that. I

43:09

bank with Wells Fargo, but they've

43:12

had things that have gone out right anywhere

43:14

that you go. So there

43:16

is not an institution

43:20

in our country, faith or

43:22

otherwise, that you don't run up against

43:24

that. We personally

43:26

stayed for as long as we

43:28

did because early on,

43:31

I was convinced that the majority

43:34

of the opposition came from

43:36

an old guard that was

43:39

fading away. I felt

43:41

like the thing that kept me in it for so long

43:43

was focusing on the potential of

43:45

all the good work that could be done.

43:48

So the SBC to

43:50

this day is a

43:52

billion dollar organization. They

43:54

spend a billion dollars on ministry

43:57

each year. I

44:00

remember all the years that we worked

44:02

for it, just kind of fighting for

44:04

a voice and for resources

44:07

to be allotted to the work that

44:09

we were trying to do. But

44:12

2016 became a line of

44:15

demarcation where it's like,

44:17

oh, wait a minute. Oh,

44:21

I thought that the whole God was

44:23

a minority, but wait a minute, 81%?

44:27

That 81% of evangelicals voted for Trump.

44:31

So in 2020, you left. Not

44:35

just you, the entire church left.

44:39

Why'd you leave? Yeah, yeah, why do we

44:42

leave? Beginning in 2013, there was like

44:44

one major thing that went on each

44:46

year. And whenever it went on,

44:48

I would like raise my hand and stand up in a room

44:50

and be like, 2013,

44:53

they had this big conference

44:55

nationwide and they talk about

44:58

the history of the

45:00

convention and slavery is

45:02

not mentioned. Are you serious? Yeah.

45:06

So I raised my hand. We

45:08

need to talk about this. And I

45:10

was hit with, oh, yeah,

45:13

that's a great point. We're definitely going to do it. It's

45:15

too late in the game to change it. So like, not

45:18

yet. And on and on and

45:20

on, right? There were all of these things and it

45:22

was continually like, not yet, not

45:24

yet. Now is not the right time. Summer

45:28

2020 became clear for me

45:31

where it was like, oh, people are

45:33

saying not yet, but I think

45:35

it's not ever. Because

45:37

after George Floyd and Ahmaud

45:40

Arbery and Brianna

45:42

Taylor were all killed, there

45:45

was this collective reckoning

45:47

in our world where for the first time

45:49

it became not

45:52

just socially acceptable, but

45:54

even like economically

45:56

advantageous for people to take

45:58

a stand. NASCAR

46:01

took the Confederate flag out. Mississippi

46:04

changed their state flag. So all

46:06

these things go on in the

46:09

world, and SBC

46:11

at the time in 2020 became very, very

46:15

clear to me that it's, if

46:18

the destination is racial justice

46:21

and solidarity, that

46:23

destination is an island, and

46:26

the Southern Baptist Convention is a bus.

46:30

I don't care if a bus is headed

46:32

in the right direction. You cannot drive a

46:34

bus to Puerto Rico. Yeah, this

46:37

is the wrong vehicle for

46:41

the task that we have at hand. It

46:44

was a decision that should have been

46:46

made earlier, but when

46:48

it was clear, it was one of the

46:51

easiest decisions that

46:54

we ever made, and slept

46:56

like a baby for the, yeah. Since

46:59

we've left. We've been talking about

47:02

racial justice. One thing we haven't talked about

47:04

is Jesus. Right. Because that's the whole

47:06

reason for all this, right? Absolutely. Evangelicals

47:09

are about evangelizing, meaning witnessing and asking

47:11

people to accept Jesus Christ as their

47:13

personal Lord and Savior, and a lot

47:15

of efforts and money are put into

47:17

that. On one level,

47:20

Southern Baptists are very effective at

47:22

saving souls. Right, yeah. So

47:25

this is where it's so hard.

47:28

Being involved with the group for 10 years,

47:31

you see lots of

47:33

genuine people that desperately

47:37

want to help, right? There are

47:39

tons of examples of people there

47:41

who talk about the

47:43

kindness of Jesus

47:46

all the time, but it's like what

47:48

I don't see is courage.

47:50

And so I think I stayed around for

47:52

a long time because people

47:55

said, no, there's a lot

47:57

of good guys on the ship

47:59

or on the ship. on this board or

48:01

lots of good guys in charge. And

48:04

I think towards the end of my time, I

48:07

realized I do

48:10

not care how many good men are in power. I

48:14

care how many courageous men are in power.

48:17

And I did

48:19

not find, I personally, I knew

48:22

some, but

48:24

I did not find many. That's

48:32

Reverend John Onewczyk was speaking with Charles

48:34

Monroe Kane. He recently stepped

48:37

down as pastor of Cornerstone Church in

48:39

Atlanta, though he's still an active member.

48:42

His organization, The Crete Collective, plants

48:44

evangelical churches in black and brown

48:46

neighborhoods. And his book, We

48:48

Go On, is a reflection on the book

48:50

of Ecclesiastes. I'm a

48:52

hill, I'm a way down. I'm

48:55

a way down. Before

48:59

he left, Charles asked Reverend Onewczyk what he

49:01

gives us a benediction, a

49:03

blessing to end the hour. I'm

49:06

a way down. Suffering

49:16

doesn't make anybody stupid.

49:21

Slaves did not ignorantly adopt the religion of

49:26

their slave masters. But

49:30

what they did was they looked

49:32

through the thin veneer of the

49:34

hypocrisy that they saw, and

49:37

they instead saw a solidarity

49:39

with Jesus, a

49:42

man who was innocent

49:46

and at odds with the

49:48

powerful religious hypocritical

49:50

elite who

49:52

persecuted this innocent man for his

49:55

faith and lynched him and

49:58

put him in jail. and

50:01

they saw solidarity with him.

50:07

And so I think

50:09

that yes, there is a lot to

50:12

lament and

50:14

there's a lot to critique in

50:16

this world. Sometimes

50:23

God saves his children from

50:25

the fire, Shadrach,

50:28

Meshach, and Abednego. Sometimes

50:32

God saves them through

50:34

the fire. Jesus

50:37

constantly talked about his death, but one

50:40

thing that you see is

50:42

that he never talked about the

50:45

future injustice that would be his

50:47

death without mentioning the future

50:49

glory that would be the resurrection.

50:53

And so, as we have

50:55

heard a lot about hypocrisy and

50:57

death, let's

50:59

be reminded that as far

51:01

as the gospel is concerned,

51:05

death is never God's final

51:07

word. It's

51:09

always a preparatory word. For

51:12

a future resurrection out of

51:14

darkness comes light,

51:17

and I am convinced that the glory of God

51:20

will shine through all of this.

51:23

That the evil that we've seen is just

51:25

a beautiful backdrop for the diamonds of the

51:27

goodness of God to shine. To

51:45

the Best of Our Knowledge is produced at

51:47

Wisconsin Public Radio and distributed by PRX. Charles

51:50

Monroe Kane produced this hour. He

51:52

had help from Shannon Henry Clyber,

51:54

Angela Albatista, and Mark Rickers. Our

51:57

technical director and sound designer is Joe Hartke

51:59

with whom? from Sarah Hulfel. Additional

52:02

music this week comes from Ketsa,

52:04

Ma'Kai Beef, Hidoy, The Trumpeteers, Flying

52:06

Cloud, and Maestro One. Steve Paulson

52:09

is the executive producer of To

52:11

the Best of Our Knowledge, and

52:13

I'm Anne Strang chance. Be

52:16

well, and come back often. B-R-X.