Straight White American Jesus

In the wake of the 1964 Goldwater campaign, three young men decided to start the Council for National Policy in order to take back the country for God--and themselves. They joined forces with an army of clergy, big donors, and media moguls in order to take back America. This "shadow network," as the journalist Anne Nelson calls it is the secretive, but pervasive force that has overtaken the GOP an...

On this installment of the Orange Wave: A History of the Religious Right Since 1960, Brad traces two intertwined histories. First, the Sun Belt Migration, which led to a massive westward population shift in the 1950s and 1960s. The Sunbelt Migration turned Orange County into the nation's hub of defense production. This led in turn into an evangelical wave in Southern California. He interviews Prof...

The Religious Right has not always existed. White evangelicals have not always been the guardians of far-right immigration policies and patriarchal models of the family. In the 19th century, they were often progressive activists fighting for labor rights, abolition, and women's suffrage. How did they transform into the scions of Christian nationalism? Brad digs in to the history with Professor Ran...

Some just want to watch the world burn. But for others, the end of the world is an opportunity to rebuild it in their image. On this penultimate episode, Brad explores how global kleptocrats, Donald Trump, and Christian Reconstructionists all view the end of the world as a chance for power and control. It is the simplest and scariest explanation of why the Religious Right continues to support the...

In the early 1960s, Orange County became the hub for both white evangelical Christianity and libertarian politics. It was the epicenter of the John Birch Society and the Goldwater campaign. This history is crucial for understanding the rise of the Religious Right throughout the 80s and beyond. It was from this soil that Reagan and his evangelical coalition took over the GOP. The racism, conspiraci...

If you want to take the country back for God, if you want to have dominion over every level of society, if you want to ensure a white Christian patriarchy rules over the land--you have to start with the children. Christian school movements are part of the fabric of the Religious Right. On this episode, Brad examines why the Christian schooling movement--including homeschooling--took off in the 60s...

You might be surprised to learn that the history of sex ed in the USA is a religious history. Christians were not always the enemies of science-based sex education programs. But during the 1960s, the Religious Right began a war against comprehensive sex education. Since then, it has been able to implement abstinence-only sex ed programs through tens of millions of dollars in federal funding. Where...

Brad explores the alliance between the alt-right and the Religious Right in and through Trump's presidency. In tracing this story, he uncovers how and why the Religious Right now looks to Putin's Russia, Orban's Hungary, and other autocratic regimes as the City Upon a Hill that the USA used to be. This episode features an interview with the renowned journalist Sarah Posner, author of Unholy: Why W...

On the series finale, Brad reflects on his departure from Orange County and evangelicalism. This provides a jumping off point for reflecting on what we've learned through the series, and, perhaps most importantly, how Orange County's politics and culture provides a window into the contemporary moment. Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-ep...

Many evangelicals are single-issue voters when it comes to abortion. Brad and Dan discuss the historical development of this trend, and why it represents more than just a concern for the unborn. Dan goes through the history that shows evangelicals were in favor of certain types of abortion all the way into the 1970s. The abortion myth, as Randall Balmer calls, it is that abortion has been a perenn...

In the wake of news that Roe v. Wade will likely be overturned, Brad and Dan begin this episode with a history of how evangelicals have transformed on the issue of abortion. In the 1960s and 1970s many evangelical pastors, theologians, and politicians were in favor of abortion in many cases and without too many restrictions. This changed when political operatives began to use abortion as a wedge i...

The American Christian landscape is littered with “Bible churches.” It is full of churches that use the word “Bible” in their name, or that claim to be “Bible believing,” and affirm that they “preach the Bible,” and so on. What meaning can we discern behind this code? What can we know about the kinds of Christians who define themselves in this way? This episode considers these questions, cracking...

Why are white evangelicals the most skeptical major religious group in America regarding climate change? Previous scholarship has pointed to cognitive factors such as conservative politics, anti-science attitudes, aversion to big government, and theology. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork, scholar Robin Globus Veldman reveals the extent to which climate skepticism and anti-environmentalism have in...

Brad and Dan begin this episode with a prolonged discussion of the newly released audio of Kevin McCarthy calling for Trump's resignation and the revelations in the 2000+ texts of Mark Meadows revealed this week. Brad argues that in the McCarthy tapes you can see an alternative pathway for the country--one where the GOP and its media entourage called out the traitorousness of Trump and his team be...

New Series: It’s in the Code American Christians speak in a bewildering array of different “codes” that mark their identities, signaling to others who is welcome among them and who isn’t. This series explores how to decode popular religious language, revealing the cultural politics of American Christians of different stripes. What does the slogan on the that church billboard mean? How can we tell...

What are the psychological stages of leaving religion? How can mourning religion lead to new forms of faith, meaning, and community? David Morris, PhD, is a publisher, author, and psychologist of religion. In his new book, Lost Faith and Wandering Souls, he treats the loss of faith as if it were any other kind of loss, and asks, what if we learned to mourn? He turns to psychoanalytic psychology fo...

Brad is joined by special guest co-host Dr. Sara Moslener. They begin by discussing the hilarious trailer for Tucker Carlson's new original show, "The End of Men," which among other things touts the practice of tanning one's testicles in order to increase testosterone levels. After some jokes about the merits of red and blue balls, they breakdown the model of masculinity Carlson is upholding as id...

Return episode following a great thread by @CaitlinJStout, Brad discusses why the people who leave evangelicalism are often the ones who devoted themselves wholeheartedly to it.  Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC Order...

Back in the early 1990s, the Unification Church demanded an apology from a brash real-estate mogul they accused of using the church as “a scare tactic” in a “morally reprehensible” effort to get Palm Beach, Florida, officials to grant his zoning wishes. But that religious sect, founded by Sun Myung Moon — and thus often derisively called the “Moonies” — has apparently since made amends with that o...

Brad and Dan begin by discussing the new Hillsong documentary, "Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed," and the various sexual abuse and infidelity scandals that have rocked the church of the stars. They draw on work by Dr. Leah Payne in order to link Hillsong to a long line of celebrity megachurches that use spectacle, entrepreneurial tactics, and slick marketing to attract young, hot, and rich parishio...

In this final series episode, Dan tries to understand why well-meaning liberals and progressives so often experience identity politics as a threat, and why they fail to take hold of the opportunities it provides. He outlines how defensiveness and a presumption of insight into the experiences of marginalized communities leads to paternalism and condescension that undermines a progressive politics t...

When the rallying cry “Black Lives Matter” was heard across the world in 2013, Andre Henry was one of the millions for whom the movement caused a political awakening and a rupture in some of his closest relationships with white people. As he began using his artistic gifts to share his experiences and perspective, Henry was aggrieved to discover that many white Americans—people he called friends an...

It's a small world after all. So small we can go from Florida to Alaska to Arizona to California in one episode. A magically tragic journey through American politics and history. Brad and Dan begin the road trop in Florida, where Uncle Ron DeSantis has labeled Disney the wokest place on earth due to its opposition for the Don't Say Gay bill. Marjorie Taylor Greene stated that Disney wants to indoc...

One of the fallacies that often arises when we think about diverse identities, marginalization, and exclusion, is that all those groups who have experience marginalization or exclusion will naturally or organically come together in solidarity. But the social and political landscape is full of examples illustrating that this doesn’t happen. This episode explores this fallacy and looks at how it ope...

"Christian nationalism seeks to merge Christian and American identities, distorting both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy. Christian nationalism demands Christianity be privileged by the State and implies that to be a good American, one must be Christian. It often overlaps with and provides cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation. We reject this damaging politica...