We Must Contest the Christian Right’s Agenda in Every Venue of Our Lives

“It is a self-replicating authoritarian system that has persisted over the course of generations,” says Talia Lavin.

Kelly Hayes

Kelly Hayes

— 36 min read
We Must Contest the Christian Right’s Agenda in Every Venue of Our Lives

"Authoritarian child-rearing and family structures directly contribute to authoritarian politics, as we've seen in other countries," says Wild Faith author Talia Lavin. In this week's episode of "Movement Memos," Talia and I discuss the emotional impacts of the presidential election, the expansive agenda of the Christian right, and how everyday people can resist what Lavin calls “our nation’s precipitous slide into autocracy.” You can listen to our full catalog of "Movement Memos" episodes wherever you get your podcasts.

This transcript was originally printed in Truthout and is shared here with permission.

TRANSCRIPT

Note: This a rush transcript and has been lightly edited for clarity. Copy may not be in its final form.

Kelly Hayes: Welcome to “Movement Memos,” a Truthout podcast about solidarity, organizing and the work of making change. I’m your host, writer and organizer Kelly Hayes. Today, in the wake of a disastrous presidential election, we are going to discuss one of the forces that made Donald Trump’s electoral comeback possible: the US Evangelical movement. Now that Trump has secured another term in the White House, and announced the appointment of multiple Christian Nationalists to his cabinet, it’s important to understand the agenda of this movement, and how it has amassed the outsized power it wields. As journalist Talia Lavin writes in her new book, Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America,  “for tens of millions of Americans, politics and spiritual warfare are one and the same.” Lavin argues that many people in the United States have dismissed the beliefs of Evangelicals as “the fantasies of a tiny slice of fired-up congregants rather than a large, powerful movement aiming—and often succeeding—at shaping the public sphere of the United States in its own image.” In today’s episode, Lavin and I will discuss how an Evangelical culture of demonization and abuse has warped our society, and how we can push back.

If you appreciate this podcast, and you would like to support our work, you can subscribe to Truthout’s newsletter or make a donation at truthout.org. You can also support the show by subscribing to the podcast on Apple or Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to acknowledge that our team is as alarmed as many of you are about the authoritarian threats we’re facing, right now. But we also know that journalism has a crucial role to play in the many battles ahead, and we are determined to do our part. Come what may, we intend to live our values, and publish the kind of news and analysis that fuels movements. None of this would be possible without the support of readers and listeners like you, so I want to thank you for believing in us and for all that you do. And with that, I hope you enjoy the show.

[musical interlude]

KH: Talia Lavin, welcome to “Movement Memos.”

Talia Lavin: Hello. Delighted to be here.

KH: How are you doing right now?

TL: I never know... I haven't known how to respond to that question for a week.

KH: I feel bad even asking.

TL: Well, it's more like if I said I'm doing great, that would be weird. 

KH: Yes, I might actually find that weird. Supportable, but weird.

TL: You know what I mean? I don't know. I'm feeling, I guess there's a certain protective numbness that's aiding me right now. But I have one response to big scary stuff that I have is just wanting to retreat from the world for various periods of time and just Bartleby out. This is what I call it, Bartleby the Scrivener, the Melville story, that he’s the main character just says, "I would prefer not to" about his clerical job, and then everything else, he sort of retreats from life. And I just feel this intense inner Bartlebyism surging up in me. Like, don't make me do anything. And especially, it's challenging because I write about politics, and so there's no sort of scenario where my work is a respite or relief. It just means more and more direct gazing into the abyss at all times. And I'm trying to be judicious and self-protective to a degree, while feeling massively selfish for protecting myself in any way. So it was not the healthiest of times, let's put it that way.

KH: Well, as someone who appreciates your work and appreciates you as a person, I am grateful for whatever you're doing to take care of and protect yourself right now, and I just want to name that.

TL: I mean, it's complicated, because some of it is about, you don't want to retreat into a shell where you lose your empathy and your engagement with the world. That's a dangerous trap. But at the same time, burning yourself out, sort of staring, like burning your eyeballs out, staring directly into the horrors and pushing yourself past emotional stability, which I've done lots of times in my writing life, it rarely works out for the best. And so I have this practice that I try to cultivate, I call it guarding, like guard your heart, where you just try to be very mindful of the ways that writing about shitty, traumatic stuff can and does impact your mind and your soul.

I think so much of American capitalist life militates against you taking your emotional health seriously. Obviously, there's a line where it slips into self-indulgence, but I think especially for people who are involved in left politics, left journalism at this moment in time, conserving energy for the battles ahead makes a lot of sense.

KH: Well, I am a big believer that if we don't make space for our emotions and process our grief, we're going to wind up being reactive when we need to be thoughtful and strategic, and we're going to wind up being belligerent in moments when we need to really hold and hear each other. So I really support folks doing what they need to do emotionally right now. Today, of course, we are going to talk about some tough subjects, including Christian Nationalism, sexual assault and child abuse, so I encourage everyone listening to do what they need to do to take care of themselves. I think it’s important to understand what we’re up against. As you so poignantly spell out in your book, the Evangelical movement wants to remake this country in their own image. So, now that Donald Trump has won the presidency and the Republicans have taken Congress, I think we need to really take a moment to understand some of the agendas that we are up against right now. And I really appreciate you making time to discuss this difficult subject matter while you’re on a writing break.

TL: Oh yeah, no, I can talk about this stuff all day. It's weirdly writing that's harder. I guess because when I'm writing, my default is like, let me dive into everything face first. And also, I've already written the book that you're asking me questions about, which is a huge bonus. It's already written, it's done.

KH: And it’s beautifully written, by the way. As is always the case with your work. I want to discuss the book today, as well as a recent article you wrote for In These Times, but before we dive into that, could you take a moment to introduce yourself and tell the audience a bit about your work?

TL: Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Talia Lavin. I am a leftist author and writer. My first book was called Culture Warlords. It came out in October of 2020, and it was sort of a very gonzo deep dive into white supremacist subcultures online, a lot of infiltrating chat rooms, "They don't know I'm a Jew," kind of stuff. And then my second book, which came out in October of 2024, because I'm cursed to produce political books in election years, I guess, is about the Christian right, and the rise of the Christian right over the last 50 years, and the acceleration of that drive to power over the last decade or so.

And I also write a newsletter, The Sword And the Sandwich, where I write about politics and right-wing stuff and history and culture, and I also write about sandwiches. Every week, I take a different sandwich from Wikipedia's list of notable sandwiches in alphabetical order and write about it, usually through the lens of history, and sometimes even colonialism or anti-capitalism, or just cuisine. But I usually try to take a more historically grounded approach, and it's been a lot of fun.

KH: Well, as someone who also researches a lot of dark subject matter, I really appreciate the way your newsletter balances the dark and the serious with sandwiches.

TL: Yeah, you got to have both, otherwise you'll go crazy. I mean, that's part of the guarding your heart sort of ethos. I find that there are people on the left who think it's sort of, and maybe this is a bit of a straw man, but I find that there's a certain attitude of suspicion of joy, suspicion of relief, that you should always be angry. And I can't live that way. Maybe other people can and are crushing it. But I did that for a long time and it really hurt and degraded me. So yeah, just on the “guard your heart” principle, I've been trying to balance out some of that very necessary sadness and sorrow with things that bring me joy, and other people joy as well.

KH: I don’t think that what you’re describing is a straw man at all. That suspicion, or even contempt for joy or relief, definitely exists in our movements, and I think it’s really destructive. So, I totally agree with you, and I could honestly talk about that all day, but I want to go ahead and ground us in the moment, and in what people are struggling with right now. You wrote a piece for In These Times recently called “The Rape Culture Election” that I think really wrestled with some of the emotions people are experiencing right now. Could you take a moment to speak to some of those concerns and feelings?

TL: Yeah. I think, I didn't realize until fairly recently how much of my trauma around Trump getting elected the first time was about the fact that he had already been outed as a rapist and a sexual assaulter, or at that point, I guess it was more sexual assault. But you had dozens of women saying, He committed these acts of violation against me. And then the country elects him anyway.

And I am someone who, like many, many, many, many women and trans folks and non-binary folks, and many people who are listening to this podcast, I'm someone who's experienced sexual violence in my life. And at the time I had this, I would say the most, one of the more concrete changes in my life I made after the election was, I gave up stand-up comedy, something I had been doing at that point for about seven years, because I couldn't handle the male-dominated, rape joke-loving scene anymore. My feeling was, if I see someone else make a rape joke in public, I'm going to lose it.

And yeah, it's not fair that I was chased out of the hobby or whatever, but I couldn't handle it. And much, much later I was like, oh, oh, this is about being a victim of rape and watching my country elect an abuser. And for all the many, many flaws of the Harris campaign, she was naming Trump as a sexual predator. And of course, he had been adjudicated a rapist, thanks to the very brave efforts of E. Jean Carroll. And so, you watch your country elect a rapist again. I think it is not a coincidence that the party voting to strip women of their autonomy over their bodies, anyone with a uterus, is the same group that's proudly supporting a rapist. There's a lot in common there. The idea is you're not allowed to say no. You are not allowed to control your own body.

And I just wanted to, in that piece, take a moment and point to that specific dynamic, which given the misogyny in the broader culture and on the left, I think maybe a lot of people, and women in particular, have not necessarily taken the space or felt able to take the space to process those feelings. At least for me also, it took me a long time to recognize that that was what I was feeling, and that was what I was viscerally responding to, and some of my grief and some of the ways my trauma manifested.

And so, yeah, I think it's just something worth taking a moment to recognize, because like you said, if you push down your emotions, they don't disappear, they just come out in other ways.

KH: Well, I want to thank you for naming that, and for writing that piece, which I know was not easy. This election has been devastating on a number of levels. For people who have experienced the pain or the fear of being violated, seeing a rapist reclaim the presidency, and appoint men who’ve been accused of sexual assault to his cabinet, is just awful.

The right-wing agenda itself is an assault on our bodily autonomy, and that assault has proven deadly for women like Amber Nicole Thurman, who developed a grave infection while she waited for a D & C, and Nevaeh Crain, who doctors refused to operate on until her fetus had been declared dead, even though sepsis was killing her. That violence is fundamental to the politics of the Evangelical movement, which we will be discussing today. As you wrote in your new book, “We are all caught in a spiritual war, even if we never chose it, even if we didn’t ever believe in it, and every body that can become pregnant in America is entrapped in a wild faith that would rather see us die in birth than live free.”I want to acknowledge that we’re all grappling with the politics of “your body, my choice” having seized the entirety of the federal government, and what that means for us and for the world. I think we have to make space for the hurt that many of us are feeling. We also have to be honest with ourselves about where we’re at and what we need. Some people are still processing these events. Some folks are taking a beat. Some people are really focused on what we need to do, and for anyone who’s listening, I just want to say that whether you’re in grief mode or go mode, or both, it’s all valid, and it’s all okay. Let’s just be sure we’re all making space for our feelings, because that’s deeply important. And let’s try to be there for each other.

Now, to talk a bit about how we got here, Donald Trump's 2024 victory was fueled by a coalition of competing but cooperative forces, including Christian nationalists, techno-fascists, corporate actors seeking deregulation, traditional Republicans, and people who advocate for a variety of openly fascistic politics. Your book is focused on the threat of Christian Nationalists who want to remake the United States in their own image. Can you talk about the outsized political power of the Evangelical movement and their role in the larger MAGA movement?

TL: So one thing about the Christian right, and that I define as sort of a movement of right-wing Christians of different sects. So you have white evangelical Protestants, who I focus on most heavily in the book, just because we are not only a Christian nation, but also specifically a Protestant nation in a lot of ways, in terms of the hegemonic culture. But many right-wing Catholics have played significant roles in the creation and success and rise of this movement. And you've got right-wing Mormons as well, that are involved for sure. And the one really big advantage this group has, and the big difference it's made in three elections in a row, is they show up. They show up, they vote en masse in congregations, and that makes a really big difference in a low-turnout milieu. And so, that's one way that they're contributing to the MAGA movement.

The other piece of it is just that their priorities are very fixed. Part of the reason why these groups that have such disparate creeds and kind of secretly believe that all of the other guys are going to hell work together so well is because they have these very consonant political goals, about controlling women, about imposing a very specific theocratic narrow and cruel view of public morality, of the roles of women and children. And this includes current and future priorities, like a national abortion ban, but also a national ban on birth control, revocation of no-fault divorce laws. I mean, these are priorities they openly have and are openly embracing.

Not to mention a very disconcerting and apocalyptic view of politics as an agent of engendering the end times. That's very upsetting and is currently influencing cabinet appointments and ambassadorial appointments. I mean, it's just very... They have stood by Donald Trump in three different elections and have seen it bear fruit. They got Roe overturned. That was their holy grail for a long time. The “why” of it is very transparent in a sense, that they had a list of priorities and many of them were fulfilled and more being promised.

Sometimes people ask me, well, these guys sort of say they're so pure, how can they vote for this adulterer, let alone three times in a row, let alone at these crazy levels? I mean, in this past election, I think the latest numbers from white evangelicals was 82% to 17%, 82% Trump to 17% Harris. I mean, that's like Saddam Hussein-level electoral numbers.

And so, why? Well, first off, it was sort of a, We're pretending to hold our nose, even though the racism and sexism actually isn't all that odious to us. And then the second two times it was like, Well, he gave us what we wanted and he'll give us more of what we want, because he knows where his bread is buttered, and he is God's flawed vessel, is how it's often put in those communities.

So not only are they imposing their priorities onto the Trumpist movement, I think they've also brought in a certain mindset of an almost religious fervor into the MAGA movement, where there's really this sense of sort of cultic altar call, savior rhetoric, where Trump has sort of uncomfortably hung out with a bunch of prophets. He has been the object of a lot of prophecies, and the kind of general vibe of wild-eyed zeal is something that has translated from megachurch to MAGA quite well.

KH: The prophetic piece is really interesting to me.

TL: Yeah, I mean, listen, I generally go into a topic knowing what to expect, but the role, just how widespread the role of prophecy is, particularly in these very fast-growing, charismatic, evangelical Pentecostal movements, was surprising to me. And yeah, Donald Trump is the locus of a whole bunch of prophecy. I mean, in 2016, the sort of most widespread prophecy about him was that he was a reincarnation of the heathen Persian emperor Cyrus, who nonetheless, despite being a heathen, allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and build the second temple. So again, this idea of God's flawed vessel. Well, he may be a heathen, but God appointed him in order to serve his goals. That was very common in 2016. You also see, Well, king David was also an adulterer, and yet he gave us the Psalms. And I'm like, okay, just imagining Donald Trump sitting down and writing melancholy poetry about his feelings about God. Sure.

So that was one sort of methodology, or one avenue of prophecy, and what I saw in the 2024 election, in terms of major prophetic themes around Donald Trump, was specifically after the assassination attempt on him in Butler, Pennsylvania, the idea that he had been saved by God in a direct intercession to serve God's purposes was very widespread and popular, and there was sort of a return to Butler rally that was very explicitly along those themes. There was rhetoric at the RNC along those themes, that Trump was essentially a kind of living martyr who had been spared from death because God was not done with him, and there's so much work God needs him to do.

And needless to say, or maybe not needless–this may sound outlandish to some of the audience–but it is very sincerely believed by the people who hold these kinds of beliefs. And I think it behooves us to understand it as sincerely held, internally consistent theological beliefs. You'll often see, particularly liberal Christians saying, They're fake Christians, they're not real Christians.

And one perspective I had in writing this book as a Jew was just, I didn't have my own personal Jesus with which to rebuke these folks, and nor did I approach it with the idea that Christian is synonymous with good. And I think that is sort of an unwillingly... unwitting blinker that a lot of Christians on the left can have. In other words, just because you disagree with every tenet of these people's faith doesn't mean that they don't sincerely think of themselves as servants of the Lord.

And disavowing them is more convenient than it is helpful, because how externally are you expecting people to identify who's a fake Christian and who's not? I think you can say, "I find your faith heretical. I find your faith cruel. I find your faith disgusting." And more to the point, just because you're very loud about it doesn't mean you're the only people who are religious in this country. There are many, many people on the left who want to use their faith and walking in their faith to build a better world. And I think that's something worthy of admiration and respect.

So just because the people who are raising the cross and blowing rams' horns for Donald Trump are the loudest, doesn't mean they have a monopoly on being faithful and wanting to transform the world, and in a faithful way, there are many, many people who use their religiosity as an impetus to make the world better. So I think faith in the public square has for so long been ceded to the worst iterations, the cruelest and narrowest iterations of Christianity. But there are many other visions that are empowering, ennobling, and belief is too important and primal a human impulse to cede to the cruelest among us.

KH: I really agree, and I think that trivializing the importance of faith and spirituality in people’s lives has been a major misstep for a lot of leftists. Because this is a very real component of the human experience, for a lot of people, and as we have seen, the right will fill any vacuum that the left leaves available to them. I’m also thinking about what Mike Davis wrote in Planet of Slums, in terms of how people can become vulnerable to cults and hyper religiosity in times of crisis. There are a lot of crises, both material and imagined – from the reality of climate chaos to the conspiracy theories and moral panics that people internalize – that are going to leave people grasping for answers, and for anything that will soothe them. Demagogues and con artists are rising to the occasion, and we need organizers who are extending real fellowship, connection and solidarity to meet the moment as well. Because people are incredibly vulnerable to grifts right now. Evangelicalism is coursing with grifts, from charismatic con men to dubious charities and supposed cures for demonic possession. Can you talk a bit about this grift culture and how it is situated in the larger unreality of Christian nationalism?

TL: Sure. Yeah. I mean, this is something that is ubiquitous on the whole right. It's not exclusive to Christian nationalism, although there's a ton of it in the Christian nationalist sphere. I mean, I signed up for a few newsletters associated with Christian right topics, like homeschooling, a few sort of right-wing news, Christian-oriented news sites, and then the sheer amount of fear-based marketing that gets thrown your way is astounding. And I think, yeah, there's a whole just ecology of grift, that Rick Perlstein argues is very hard to separate from the ideology that there's not necessarily a place where the grift stops and the ideology begins. They're sort of one and the same, which I think is interesting.

I would say the key method of marketing that I've seen, and why it seems to have potency, is fear. Fear is underrated as a drive that gets people to buy stuff. I mean, a lot of times marketing is about making you feel small, making you feel bad about yourself, therefore, buy this product and you'll redeem this problem you didn't even know you had until our ad. But with the right, it's like, buy the survival pack and you'll get through the horrors that are coming. Buy these protective shields against 5G or these cures for vaccine symptoms, stuff like that. It's all just rooted in this terror of change, and I think that's very consonant with the conservative mindset. It's just a sort of literalizing of this mindset of fear and guardedness. It's like, well, you're irresponsible to your family if you don't have our specific freeze-dried mashed potatoes for the apocalypse.

And that's just absolutely everywhere. Lots of cash for gold. Buy gold, buy commemorative coins, that kind of stuff. I mean, and it's phenomenally profitable. There is a certain sense in which the conservative movement in the US is rooted in direct mail scams. It's all about building that mailing list of suckers. And there are a lot of things to be afraid of in a changing world, and there are many ways that people's isolation and people's innate and sublimated fears about the world can be transformed into fear and then exploited, whether that's fear of the other, or fear of apocalyptic conditions, but never climate change-induced, just the tyrannical government is going to attack your house in suburban Iowa, so you better buy this stuff.

Yeah, I mean, it's a huge parallel economy, as the term Kathryn Joyce had for it in The New Republic, just all this stuff you've never heard of. From mushroom extracts to make you more vital, to bug out tents and tactical gear, all this stuff. And a lot of it is God-flavored. A lot of it isn't. But it does appeal particularly to a populace that is in many ways driven by fear as a primary activating principle.

KH: On the subject of fear, I want to talk about panics and conspiracy theories. You and I recently discussed the evolution of the Satanic panic in US culture in a conversation from my newsletter. In Wild Faith, you describe QAnon as having descendant movements. Can you talk about this lineage of panic and conspiracy, and how QAnon has affected the larger terrain of conspiratorial thinking and reason in the US? 

TL: Yeah, woo, boy, give me an easy one. The paranoiac strain of American life is well documented at this point. This is a country where we are richly receptive to conspiracy theories of lots of different kinds, and it's fueled movements over the course of centuries. I chose to start the book with the Satanic panic, just because to many younger readers, and I'm talking about anyone who doesn't have a vivid personal memory of the 1980s, the Satanic panic feels very outlandish, and they might not know the details of it at all.

And so, what it was was this panic focused specifically around daycares, and the idea that daycares had become hotbeds of not just sexual abuse, but sexual abuse specifically in the service of Satan. I mean, literally Lucifer, that there were these gangs of sort of satanically linked daycare providers that were abusing children.

And yes, it sounds ludicrous, but the Department of Justice and local prosecutors across the country, from California to Texas to Florida, and even New York, took this very seriously. And a lot of people either had to endure horrific, ludicrous trials. The McMartin Preschool case in Manhattan Beach, California, as sort of the case of this, where you had parents and psychologists coercing these preschoolers, who were very suggestible and want to please authority figures, and also have very large imaginations, to say stuff like there were secret tunnels in the preschool, and my teacher flew like a witch, and they made us go bury ourselves in graves and whatever. And people really believed in the tunnels. Like the cops did a sonar search, and many searches have been made for the tunnels, and they were never found, the secret orgy tunnels for worshiping Satan behind the McMartin Preschool.

And that trial lasted for seven years, and those seven defendants went through hell. They were eventually acquitted, and others were not so lucky. So a couple that I talk about, Fran and Dan Keller, who were from the Austin area, on the basis of similarly truly ludicrous accusations – I mean, they laced our Kool-Aid with blood, they killed doves, they put manure in an asthma nebulizer. All this, I mean, really, you can't overstate how outlandish these accusations were.

This couple wound up going to jail and serving hard time in Texas for decades – decades – until they were finally exonerated and released, thanks to, not the state doing it on its own, but Innocence Project-type activities and the main medical testimony being recanted by an ER doctor who was actually like, I actually have no idea... I had no idea at the time what pre-pubescent sexual abuse looked like. Yeah, so these people did decades in jail. I mean, they came out in their 70s, on the basis of these fantastical and horrific allegations. And that story repeated itself across the US and Canada. [Editor’s Note: Dan Keller was 72, at the time of his release, and Fran Keller was 63.]

So I start with that, obviously because in large part, it was driven by the Christian right, which independently was sort of declaring all kinds of things Satanic in the '80s. Dungeons & Dragons was a notable target. Lots of burning of popular music and other things sort of influenced by the devil.

But the argument I make in the book is that moral panics never really die, they just kind of fade out for a time and then return in a new form. And America has been obsessed with the devil for a very long time, for centuries, and so that type of panic was never going to really sleep. And throughout the '90s and early 2000s, evangelical demonology, these novels and demonology books, where it's like, “this is all the different kinds of demon that can attack you in your house” kind of thing, that never stopped.

And what is interesting is if you look at the rhetoric of QAnon, which is this movement that arose in 2017 after Trump's election, and was this conspiracy essentially that Democrats and the "deep state," which is basically the bureaucracy, were Satan-worshiping, child-abusing monsters. Many of the motifs repeat themselves and recur, so that my contention is the Satanic panic never really ended.

And now, QAnon is not something you'll hear about as much these days from people who are really examining the right wing. And that, I would argue, a lot like the way you don't hear about the alt-right so much these days, because like the alt-right, QAnon was in many ways a victim of its own success. Sure, the idea that Hillary Clinton engaged in decades of blood-drinking Satanic orgies might not be quite the platform a lot of Republican officials are running on. But the idea of a sinister deep state, particularly the allegations that the 2020 election was stolen, which originated really in QAnon, have just become de rigueur, as has this sort of bloody-minded aura of suspicion and conspiracy, kind of a miasma hanging around the right in the U.S. So people no longer need to go to 8chan or these underground websites, necessarily, to hear that kind of point of view. And it's all, it very much has the same DNA as the Satanic Panic and lots of other moral panics throughout American history.

KH: I really appreciate that you mentioned novels, as well, and how your book really explores the role that works of fiction have played in propelling some of these panics. As someone who pays a lot of attention to the far right, I’m always interested in the stories that right-wingers are sort of mapping onto the world, from conspiracies that they claim are real, to fictional stories that they hold up as foreshadowing what winning or losing looks like – from Timothy McVeigh’s obsession with The Turner Diaries to Steven Miller’s fixation with The Camp of the Saints. In your book – and I know we discussed this a bit in our conversation for Organizing My Thoughts – you talk about how horror movies like The Exorcist helped fuel fears about possession and the devil in popular culture, and about how Evangelicals got deeply invested in novels like This Present Darkness by Frank E. Peretti. And of course, more recently, we have the movie Sound of Freedom, about human trafficking, which is connected to this sort of ever-present theme about the need to protect children. This idea that, We have to oppress people, we have to control, contain, push out, or eliminate people, and it’s all for the children, because the people who aren’t like us want to abuse and corrupt our children.

Right-wing panics often involve narratives about saving children, and yet, children are routinely victimized, when these stories are projected onto the real world. We saw it during the Satanic Panic, when children were coerced into making false allegations, and when teenagers were the subject of false allegations. And we’re seeing it now, with trans youth being targeted and vilified. I'm thinking about a recent piece that Marisol Cortez wrote for Truthout called “Not Everyone Can Leave: Survival Advice from Trans Teens in Texas,” which draws a parallel between the Satanic Panic and what young trans people have endured, in recent years, particularly in states where bathroom bans and restrictions on gender-affirming care have become law. I think, if you weren’t alive in the ‘80s, or have maybe just memory-holed a lot of the weird shit that happened back then, it’s easy to assume that the Satanic Panic was just a bunch of hyper religious people having a meltdown. But a lot of everyday people, who were not extremely religious, a lot of professionals, and a lot of lawmakers – and not just Republicans – got swept up in this. It had a wide-reaching cultural impact. The common wisdom was that Satanic ritual violence was a real threat to children. Now, when we look at what trans youth are saying, in Marisol’s piece, they’re talking about how even people who had previously supported them, or who just didn’t seem to care about their identities, have become more hostile, due to the rhetoric behind these laws, and the disinformation Republicans are peddling. Even within their own families, the hostility has been ramped up by this myth-making. So I think people really need to be conscious of the forces that we're dealing with culturally right now that are spurred by these officials and the laws and the rhetoric that they're pushing, and how it is shaping the wider culture, and the atmosphere that children are living in. Because this demonization is having tremendous impacts on young people’s lives, and that impact won’t be limited to right-wing laws and attitudes. TL: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'd also add that for a lot of Christian opponents of trans rights, in many cases, these two dovetail. It's the idea that demons are behind why people want to transition. That does happen too.

But as to your broader and very crucial point, and to Marisol's point, yeah, like Janet Reno, who went on to become Attorney General of the United States, was one of the people who prosecuted a Satanic panic case. You also had some feminists who kind of tragically and misguidedly thought that this was finally a moment where sexual abuse, and particularly the sexual abuse of children, this incredibly widespread problem, was being taken seriously for the first time. You had victims' rights advocates. I mean, it was a broad coalition, and it also made it on like NBC News, and Geraldo [Rivera] did a giant primetime special about very credulously talking about the rise of Satanism in the U.S.

So yeah, it was absolutely super, super mainstream. It was also partially driven by, like all moral panics, it was driven by social changes. So the absolute demonization of trans people, who are this very tiny, very, very tiny minority in the U.S., and impoverished and powerless relative to the rest of us, that represents a panic about a shift away from this sort of compulsorily heterosexual, patriarchal model of power and gender.

And actually, in similar ways, the reason the Satanic panic was so focused on daycares was because the '80s also marked a high watermark for women's participation in the workforce. So you needed a lot more daycares, because a lot more mothers of young children needed care for their children so they could work. And that anti-feminist backlash, one of the many forms it took was the Satanic panic. Let's attack the thing that enables women to work. Daycare teachers, like trans teens, are not movers and shakers and the power players in society, but moral panics always arise out of some central anxiety, and usually they're the most concentrated form of backlash of dominant systems and images of power.

So yeah, certainly I think trans teens, whom I bless with my whole heart and who are much braver than the troops and are really going through it, they become demonized because they represent change. And as we just talked about, this movement is rooted in fear, aggressive and hateful fear of change. In many cases, hate arises out of fear.

And then, as you and I both know, the main metric for propaganda is just how often it's repeated, and that's how propaganda works. And so this anti-trans message, much like the Satanic panic before it, has become a kind of conventional wisdom, that trans rights have gone too far, and the kids are too trans, and yada, yada, women's sports, and it's just absolutely everywhere. You really can't avoid it. And that's how propaganda works. Even if you're not sort of a wild-eyed transphobe, chances are you've heard a transphobic argument, and maybe it's in the pages of The New York Times, or maybe it's in the pages of The Atlantic, but it nonetheless serves the same goal of making transphobia ubiquitous and making the existence of people like those trans Texan teens incredibly precarious and frightening.

KH: I really appreciate those observations, and I also want to add that, in countering these narratives, we have to be concerned with both parties. Because so-called centrist Democrats, who are actually on the right, if we’re honest, are seizing upon Harris’s defeat and claiming that progressive ideas are to blame. Politico quoted one DNC member as saying, “I don’t want to be the freak show party, like they have branded us. You know, when you’re a mom with three kids, and you live in middle America and you’re just not really into politics, and you see these ads that scare the bejesus out of you, you’re like, ‘I know Trump’s weird or whatever, but I would rather his weirdness that doesn’t affect my kids.’”The capitulation and the scapegoating is just horrifying. So, people of conscience are really going to have to hold our ground in defending trans folks, and in defending immigrants right now, because as we've seen recently, reactionary attitudes towards immigrants are very popular right now as well. We are going to see a lot of indulgence of reactionary views, on both sides of the aisle, and we have to push back against that, on a personal level, on a cultural level, and in all of our politics. We also need to offer as much aid and comfort to trans young people as we possibly can.

Now, we have been talking a lot about the political reach, power, and aspirations of the Evangelical movement, and I want to sort of zoom out for a moment, to give people a sense of what that vision looks like. Can you take a moment and explain the Seven Mountain Mandate and what its pursuit means for people living in the US and the world?

TL: Nothing good. Which is sort of my mantra when I'm talking about, when I get asked, "So what does this mean?" I'm like, "Nothing good." Yeah. So the Seven Mountain Mandate arose in, it was originally coined in the '70s, I want to say? But there was a book more recently, co-written by the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, alongside this sort of charismatic evangelical self-proclaimed prophet named Lance Wallnau. It sort of dubiously, the seven mountains in question are sort of somewhat torturously derived from the book of Jeremiah, like God sits at the top of the seven mountains.

But essentially, what the Seven Mountain or 7M Mandate is about is an explicit pursuit of temporal power by Christians in order to achieve an unsullied kingdom of God on earth. So the seven mountains in question are arenas of secular power, so politics, media, family, entertainment, and so on. And what the Seven Mountain Mandate is, that in order to create a kingdom of God on earth and in such a way that will eventually lead to the return of Jesus by establishing a perfect thousand-year reign of Christendom on earth, that Christians must explicitly achieve conquest in these seven arenas.

And when you are playing for the stakes of Messiah's return, versus the kind of ascent of Satan, you are not encouraged to play fair. When you view your opponents as literally in thrall to demons, you don't have to abide by stuff like norms and respect. They're sort of beside the point, or even detrimental.

So I mean, some of this stuff is like, are we going to see a wholesome Christian Hollywood? I don't know if that's going to happen so fast. Certainly the Christian right has for a long time been developing a parallel material culture, from sort of bands that are rip-offs of whatever mainstream musical trend is sort of happening at the time, to these sort of thriller films about angels and demons and revelation and so on.

Politics, it's sort of self-explanatory, where what was once maybe at the beginning of the early decades of the 20th century was considered worldly and beneath the attention of Christians is now at the absolute center of the Christian right, which is an inextricably religious and political movement. Family, you have all these laws explicitly about the family sphere. You have this opposition to divorce, constant demonization of no-fault divorce laws. Of course, abortion bans. In many ways, you can view this as an explicitly Christian attempt to control the mountain of family.

And there are lots of analogous efforts. The point is that the vision is to establish a kingdom of Christ on earth right here, right now, starting in America, and that this is a theological gambit that makes acquiring as much temporal power in as many spheres as possible, not only laudable, but theologically necessary. And it's very far from any ideas of power being worldly or corrupting. It's very much about we've got to acquire power by any means necessary and in as many spheres as possible all at once.

And so in that sense, it is very unnerving, shall we say? But it's also worthwhile to look at, recognize, and as with the other beliefs I outline in the book, understand that it is held with pretty much absolute sincerity by many people who view this as their theological obligation to prepare for the return of the Messiah. And so, this is the level of zeal we're dealing with, and it's a challenge, but it can't be faced if you sort of say, "Well, they're fake and they don't really believe this." And it's like, no, people really do, and therefore you have to understand that your political opponents don't just view you as an obstacle, they view you as a tool of Satan. And that's a very different battle, and it's just worth knowing that those are the stakes.

KH: I also want to dig deeper into the realm of the family, and what kind of culture Evangelicals are trying to build in that regard. In your book, you talk a lot about child abuse and highlight the stories of many people who were abused in evangelical homes as children. You also talked about the consequences for future generations and for society when children are conditioned to accept or reenact such abuses. Can you share a bit about what you learned in talking to these abuse survivors?

TL: First of all, it was an absolute privilege to have so many people entrust me with some of the most difficult and painful moments of their lives, whether that was abuse in marriage or abuse at home. And several reviewers have said that I talk about child abuse too much, and I'm like, well, if that is my biggest crime as a writer, I can handle it.

What was really striking to me, so I combined talking to over 150 former evangelicals for the piece with reading exemplars of 50 years worth of parenting manuals by evangelicals for evangelicals. So these are intra-community texts. They're not propaganda for outsiders. They are written by evangelical figures for evangelical parents handed, out at church, given to new parents. And all of them, all of them dictate this incredibly punishing, incredibly dark, just amount of ritualized physical abuse of kids. Like beating kids, hitting kids, from when they are, sometimes even before they're able to walk, sometimes before they're able to talk. Hitting them, spanking them, hitting them with a switch.

And the principle goal that these books, the values they ask you to inculcate in your child, is not necessarily curiosity or loving kindness or gentleness or any of that. The principle virtue of a child and what makes for a good child is absolute obedience, and that is enforced by this violent dominance over children through systematized, ritualized physical abuse, explicitly in the name of God.

There are a lot of scare tactics towards parents, where if you don't hit your kid with the rod, you're condemning them to eternal hellfire and death. And it's not that I absolve abusers, but more just that for a lot of people, this is the only model of parenting they're presented with as acceptable, and it's sort of hard to break away from in that sense.

But I mean, I guess the answer... So what does that do, when you have tens of millions of people over the course of 50 years who have been trained to a violently enforced obedience, in thought and in affect and in action, right? Instant, joyful obedience is the keyword that you hear in these contexts.

And what is so grim about it is that that kind of authoritarian family structure doesn't stay within the home, as horrible as it is there. What you're creating when you create these people who have been inculcated into unquestioning obedience and accustomed to violence, accustomed to brutality, you are creating a phalanx of people who are openly accepting of authoritarianism, who find authoritarianism to be the most natural way of relating to the world, because it's how they've grown up. And so, of course they would support a would-be dictator and autocrat.

Authoritarian child-rearing and family structures directly contribute to authoritarian politics, as we've seen in other countries, particularly, there's been a lot of study of fin de siècle German parenting and how that contributed to the rise of the Nazi movement. And in the words of the psychologist Alice Miller, who did a study of precisely that, she's like, when you beat a child this way, when you beat obedience into them, you are creating the ideal torturer. And I think that's a line that's really stuck with me.

And of course, the people I spoke to were people who'd broken away, sometimes in the case of they had kids and were like, "Oh, I don't want to hit my kid. It's wrong." But what's really scary is that these people also want to impose that kind of family structure, with a dominant father, a submissive co-enforcer mother, and children who are absolutely terrorized, make that the norm. And they do that through these parental rights movements, the homeschooling movement, constant pushback against child abuse laws and any regulation of what goes on in the home. And so it is a self-replicating authoritarian system that has persisted over the course of generations, and we are seeing the fruits of that movement now in our nation's precipitous slide into autocracy.

KH: Well, I could talk to you all day about this subject, and I wish we could, but I know we’re out of time, so I just want to say, I am really grateful for this conversation, and for your new book, Wild Faith, which I hope everyone will check out. I know this is a heavy subject, and a heavy time, and I really want to thank you so much for joining me today, Talia. I always learn so much from you.

TL: Oh, it was my absolute pleasure, and it was lovely to speak to you, and I am excited for this to come out and excited to maybe collaborate in the future.

KH: Absolutely. [musical interlude]

KH: In her book, Talia writes:“The desire for America to be a Christian hegemon, a kingdom that crushes infidels within and without, will not wane or abate until the public at large decides that this movement represents a legitimate threat and works to countermand it. This is difficult, painful work and demands a counterzeal that is not easy to muster in the dull, painful, costly, and challenging world.”

I want us to think about what that “counterzeal” looks like in practice. What do we have to believe in, or love, or defend, so fiercely that we can outmatch the momentum of those trying to enforce a Christian Nationalist agenda? The Seven Mountain Mandate names family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, business, and government as sites of conquest. So, we must ask ourselves, how are we defending our values and our people in those spaces? How are we countering the alienation that young trans people are experiencing in their own homes? How are we defending education and spaces where people learn together? I think the resources Mariame Kaba has offered, around organizing to defend public libraries, are an excellent example of how we can protect and fortify spaces where community members, including children, share ideas, build culture and acquire knowledge. 

I think we should also ask ourselves, what kind of stories are we consuming and uplifting? I recently watched a mystery satire about the Satanic Panic called Hysteria!, which is streaming on Peacock, and in addition to really enjoying it, I thought it had a really good message. We need more art – more radical art, and more artistic work in the mainstream, like Hysteria! that undermines the fear and demonization of the Evangelical agenda. It’s important to recognize the true belief that underlies the Evangelical movement, and to recognize that nefarious actors who do not share that faith recognize its power as a means of shaping culture and controlling people’s bodies and actions. So-called cultural Christians, like Elon Musk, are eager to weaponize the fears, biases, and anxieties of hyper-religiosity, without offering up an ounce of devotion. The Evangelicals whose faith dictates that women should be subject to their husbands, and that no one should have access to abortion care, or gender-affirming care, the people who would catapult us into some of the darkest days of history, are well supported, and well-resourced, and their agendas are entangled with those of billionaires and autocrats.Our enemies are waging a war, and to many of them, it’s a holy war. That means we have a lot to protect in these times, and a lot to create. As storms and fires rage, and conspiracies circulate, a lot of people are afraid, and in times of crisis – both real and imagined – people tend to double down on tradition, or buy into lies about mythical pasts that are used to justify an oppressive future. That includes traditional gender roles and ideas about how we’re all supposed to live. If we don’t want people’s confusion and anxiety to be weaponized by the right, we need to offer the kind of fellowship and vision that can give people a sense of direction and purpose in these times.I don’t have to tell you that, right now, the other side is winning. When books that discuss gender and sexuality are banned in schools, and when teaching the truth of history is forbidden, our enemies rejoice. When the families of trans youth become hostile toward them, due to the rhetoric and the lies they are internalizing, the Christian right gets stronger. Right now, these forces are about to drive the agenda of every major branch of the federal government. So we need to think about what it means to defend our values and our people in spaces that are under siege. This is a spiritual battle, a cultural battle, an intellectual battle and also a very personal battle. And no one gets to sit this one out.In our next episode, we’ll talk about how we can organize to defend our neighbors against the threat of mass deportations. For now, I want to thank our listeners for joining me today. And remember, our best defense against cynicism is to do good, and to remember that the good we do matters. Until next time, I’ll see you in the streets.Show Notes

Resources:

  • For The People is an explicitly political project aimed at building power on the Left(s) to protect, defend, and expand public libraries in communities across the county.
  • Mariame Kaba recently adapted this list of actions, beyond protesting and voting, that people can take right now.
  • This podcast featuring Daniel Hunter is a useful resource for people grappling with the current moment.
  • "Worth Fighting For" Community Gatherings Facilitator's Toolkit is a post-election resource from the Working Families Party that “offers a structure for how to hold a space for yourself and fellow activists to process, strengthen community, and begin to ready ourselves for the future.”
  • The Chicago Abortion Fund has created a house party guide for people who would like to host a gathering to raise money for abortion funds. If you’re not sure which fund to support, check out The National Network of Abortion Funds’ Find a Fund page.

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