Money, Lies, and God: Katherine Stewart on the Christian Right’s Influence

In this thought-provoking episode of Faithful Politics, Will Wright welcomes back Katherine Stewart, a leading investigative journalist on religious nationalism, to discuss her latest book, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy. Katherine unpacks the growing influence of the Christian Right in American politics, showing how religious leaders and billionaire donors are strategically using faith to push an anti-democratic agenda. She explores the historical roots of this movement, its ties to major think tanks like the Claremont Institute and the Heritage Foundation, and how policies from Project 2025 aim to reshape the government. From abortion and immigration to the growing war on expertise, Katherine sheds light on how the Christian nationalist movement is shaping elections and policy in ways most Americans don’t realize. If you want to understand the intersection of faith and power in today’s political landscape, this episode is a must-listen.

Guest Bio: Katherine Stewart
Katherine Stewart is an award-winning investigative journalist and author specializing in the intersection of religion and politics. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, The Guardian, and many other major publications. She is the author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism and her latest book, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy, offers a deep dive into the financial and ideological forces behind the rise of the Christian nationalist movement. With over 16 years of research in this field, Katherine is a leading voice on how faith is weaponized for political power.

Transcript

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Hey, welcome back, faithful politics listeners and watchers. If you are watching us on our YouTube channel, we're really glad to have you. I'm your political host, Will Wright, your faithful host, Pastor Josh Bertram can't be here today, but today we are honored to have back with us, Catherine Stewart, world renowned religious reporter, the best there is out there in the biz, is out with a new book and it is called Money Lies in God. wait, where's the subtitle? inside the movement, it's at the top, inside the movement to destroy American democracy. And we are so glad to have you back, Catherine. Thanks for being here. Thank you so much. It's really great to be in conversation with you always. Yeah, so I have to tell you, when I got the advanced copy, I generally try to read like two or three books at a time because I'm crazy. But I elected to read your book alongside Anne Nelson's book, The Shadow Network. And now I can't look at the world the same anymore. And I got to ask before we kind of get into your book, like, do you, how do you, I don't want say how do you live. How do you like? just exists without seeing traces of like the religious right everywhere you turn. Well, I think once it's like one of these things that once you see it, you can't really unsee it. As you know, my interest in this issue began 16 years ago when something called a Good News Club showed up in our daughter's public elementary school in Santa Barbara, California. And at first, it just sort of looked like this nice initiative driven by some local personalities. And, you know, they say they just want to teach Bible study from a non-denominational standpoint. which actually I later I thought was meant non-sectarian. I was really naive at the time. And then I discovered this small, seemingly local program was part of a national effort and that national organization was part of a much larger war on public education. organization and its partners were deeply hostile to the institution of public education precisely as only just one small part of like an assault on modern. constitutional democracy. you know, once you start kind of seeing, understand the language and the framing and really start researching the motivations behind some of these smaller initiatives, you can see how they link together on a sort of larger anti-democratic project and you can kind of understand better. why we're seeing what's happening in our politics today. And I really try and sort of dig into that in a much deeper way. Look, it's been 16 years that I've been researching and writing about this movement, Money Lies in God is my third book on the topic. So I'm really trying to help people understand, you know, when people say, how did this happen? I'm like, well, this is how it happened. And by the way, within that, there are sort of, sort of, guideposts for how we can actually work toward a more perfect union. Yeah, would you say that reading your other book, The Pyro Worshippers, sets like a good foundation before somebody opens up Money Lies in God? Absolutely, you know, the power worshippers really focused on the Christian nationalist movement. And I think of religious nationalism as akin to something like authoritarianism. something that, it's a political dynamic that affects a political system rather than just a set of attitudes that are embraced by the rank and file. This movement is leadership driven. and it's organization driven and its strength is in this deeply networked infrastructure. And I really try and lay out the pieces of that in the power worshipers. do similar work, of course, in Money Lies in God, but I pay more attention. let's first talk about it, money. Money is a huge part of the story. because huge concentrations of wealth have destabilized the political system in a number of ways. And, you know, I talk about that in Power Worshippers, but I shine a sort of brighter light on that in Money Lies in God. Second, lies and conscious disinformation or propaganda is really another huge feature of the movement. And I really delve into that in Money Lies in God. Remember, Power Worshippers came out before January 6th, before the overturning of Roe versus. weighed before a sort of rise of QAnon, conspiracism and reawaken America. And I really talk about the role that those initiatives and events have played in the anti-democratic movement. And third, I talk about God, know, money lies in God because the most important ideological framework for the largest part of this movement is Christian nationalism. Hold on a second, as you're talking, my mic fell. I'm just marking the clipper in here. Just give me five seconds. Sorry about that. Sorry about that. That's kind of weird. Okay. so let me see. Hit the unclip thing. All right. Okay. so you mentioned in your book, you know, how the Christian right has been a, like a central player in what you call like the rise of an anti-democratic political movement. you, you, there's a few quotes in there and I, I, if I were a better host, would have had them pulled up already, where you talk about pastors essentially helping a lot of these money people promote these anti-democratic ideals from the pulpit. So I'd love for you to maybe just elaborate on a little bit of that and why is it so significant. Sure, the movement promotes the idea that the US is founded not on any principles, but instead on a specific religion and cultural heritage. So it's the idea that America's on the brink of an apocalypse owing to the rise of equality and what they call wokeness, which basically means various forms of equality. and the radical left, is what they call anyone who is remotely to the left of them, by the way, moderate Republicans. It's the idea that democracy won't be able to solve our problems. And it's the idea that sort of the rules don't apply anymore because of that. So what we need is a strong man, an authoritarian leader who puts himself above the law and who's gonna seize the reins of power. and scrap laws and rules and norms in favor of the iron fist, really. So in sum, it's the idea that democracy in the sense of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, respecting individual rights in a pluralist society, it's this idea that this kind of government simply doesn't work. So you need to smash it up in a grand explosion and create something new, an autocracy. And that's frankly, as I hope I make clear, emphatically not the idea of Thomas Jefferson or Frederick Douglass or Abraham Lincoln or so many others who over time helped create America as we know it. This idea is really as anti-American as it gets. Can you maybe provide a through line that you used in the book to kind of help show how they are strategically exploiting certain issues? We could take immigration or gender, whatever issue you think would probably resonate the best with our audience. Yeah, mean, the immigration issue is a really interesting one because of course immigration is an issue that governments can debate and discuss to craft the best policies, right? But for these folks, it's not that they're taking the issue on, it's the way that they frame it. Immigration is a really good go-to issue for authoritarians and has been throughout history because blaming the other is really the preferred strategy. of authoritarian leaders. It plays into people's fears. It often divides the population. It identifies a scapegoat that they can sort of project all their sort of anxieties and resentments onto. So we look at the administration, the incoming administration. They have really been shameless about that. Trump himself has pumped up stories about immigrant crime and implied that all immigrants are criminals, you know? And that really sets up a sharp contrast between like the us and the them, we the real Americans and they the foreign or different elements. Now, listen, a reasonable approach to immigration would have to balance the real needs and demands that drive immigration against sort of, I would say transition costs or other issues. you know, I mean, when it comes to immigration there are always a lot of issues to talk about, but that's not how Trump. and his closest advisors are really framing the issue at all. What's coming out of the Trump administration is not reason policy, it's really demagoguery. We need to send them all back full stop, no matter if they were brought here as two month olds and have been living and working as Americans for decades. So none of that is really centered on rational policy making or what makes sense for the American economy. or any other sort of features. So again, it's not that they made immigration the ceiling issue, it's really the way that they've done it that is really the big tell. And that's something that authoritarian leaders have done over time around the world and throughout history. They need a scapegoat. And this is one of the current administration scapegoats. But like how are like religious leaders, you know, enabling this kind of behavior? mean, like I'm, you know, Josh is more the biblical person, but I could swear there's some choice verses in the Bible about, you know, loving your neighbor kind of thing. So like, how are the religious right, you know, taking the immigration issue to, you know, preach to their congregation that everything Trump says about immigration is correct. You know, as you know, religious congregations are all over the map when it comes to immigration. But at many of the sort of religious right conferences and events that I've been to in the past year, they're not emphasizing immigration as much as they are some other culture war issues. They talk about abortion, for instance, I think remains a huge issue for them. It's a wonderful tool in a way. for anti-democratic movements. It's worked not just in the US, but in other places as well, like in Poland or say, Ceausescu's Romania, which was an authoritarian one-party state, and he eliminated abortion and birth control, and as a consequence, had the highest rate of maternal deaths in all of Europe. But here's what's so useful about this particular issue. I mean, you hear a lot more focus on these gender issues and on reproductive issues at... at the sort of in the churches and houses of worship that are part of this movement. So they're really presented by anti-abortion leaders as these binary issues. You're with us or you're against us, right? Again, in a way, it's like that immigration issue. You're one of the pure or one of the impure. You're who properly belongs in this country and who doesn't. So it makes it easier for them to message voters. They can say you're either pro-life or against life, right? So it's this very binary issue. Second of all, it really demonizes the political opposition. So there's a really curious pattern, I think, if you pay attention to the way folks who are pro-choice are talking about the issue. They're often going to at least make some effort to say something along the lines of, know, I respect the views on the other side, but I disagree with them, and here's why. But you almost never hear the same thing on the other side, because the way they present it, If you support reproductive rights in any form, you're anti-life and you kill babies and thus you are irredeemably evil. So it really functions well for them. It's the frankly is because abortion takes away the restrictions on reproductive rights, take away people's rights. It grants the government tremendous power over individual lives. It steals from them their ability to make the most impactful decisions in every way. It controls their futures. puts the government in people's bedrooms. It turns doctors and nurses into spies. It chases people across borders. It's a terrific issue for control. So it's a really good issue for authoritarians. But here's the thing, it's tied to religion. So people can vote as they consider themselves pro-life voters and they see their vote as like actually religious act. And that makes them perfect candidates for religious nationalism and turns them into effective tools for a theocratic government. You just said something that I've never really considered, which is why it's great to read your stuff and talk to you. But you made a comment about feeling like you're doing a religious act. And it's like, there's all this, I don't know, advertising, know, speeches and... you know, religious messaging that says, hey, protect life, life is all that matters, pro-life, pro-life, blah, blah, blah. You probably don't even have to say, you know, go vote pro-life. You just need to wait for the politician to say, I'm pro-life. And then you connect the dots and they're like, cool. I'm my religious duty. Like I'm voting for the pro-life candidate. It almost seems like, like this is just like some huge programming. Well, they also do say you need to vote your biblical values and they have tremendous resources devoted to helping people understand what those biblical values should be. It's all about respecting life, biblical marriage, et cetera. They're really big on pushing the trans issues these days in a way that's so outsized to whatever relevance they have or don't have in people's lives. And then the immigration issue, just to go back to that briefly, it's all about fear. You know, it's about saying they, the evil Democrats, whatever want open borders, well, that's absolutely not true. But they sort of spread these kinds of lies about the other side in order to demonize it and help people to understand that they need to be voting for conservative Republicans. You know, it at the America Fest, it's Turning Point USA's annual convention. It took place in December in Phoenix, Arizona. There were 20,000 people there, members of the sort of MAGA hardcore. And one of the speakers said, there is absolutely no biblical justification for voting Democrat. I mean, they're really quite clear about it. And by the way, they're ahead of turning point faith. This guy named Lucas Miles, his whole thing is, you know, I need to eradicate woke Jesus from the American pulpit. He actually has a... book with the title like woke Jesus. I'm going to paraphrase here. I don't have it on top of my head like the heresy destroying the American church. And what is woke? Well, he specifically named the social gospel, which many people understand as, oh, that's the gospel. But, you he said we need to, you know, things started to go wrong in the 17th century. You sort of got to wonder what he's talking about. He's like, we need a new Nicene Creighton council. which is referring to the fourth century gathering, of called by the Roman emperor who wanted to sort of settle the doctrines of Christianity. But he named the social gospel, historical Jesus movement, liberation theology and black liberation theology as like, that's woke and terrible and it's heretical. It was really kind of astonishing. mean, this is the way I would say many, if not most Christians understand their faith having to do with the social gospel, caring for the least of these, loving their neighbor, know, doing good. Yeah, and that's that's always really tough. I mean, you know religious leaders have a very important job because they're kind of like your tour guide on this faith that you, you know, subscribe to and you assume that they know the Bible better than you do. You know, that's the case with Josh and I. I I go to Josh's church, you know, so like I'll text Josh a question about the Bible. Like, you know, where does the devil go when he dies? You know, or something like that. And like sometimes they're kind of funny, but but it's like you've got congregants that are listening to these folks and they're just like, oh, okay, yeah, they're a leader in the community. They wouldn't lead me astray or anything like that. And I would even argue, and I'd to get your thoughts about this, like, do you think that some of these religious leaders even know that they're cog in a much bigger sort of machine? It's really hard to know to what extent they're aware of the bigger picture. I I've been to a number of these pastor gatherings of either Faith Winds or Watchmen of the Wall, where leaders of the movement, people like David Barton and Chad Connolly and so many others, will draw these pastors into, they draw them into networks, they go to a church, they have a presentation. with all the pastors and sometimes their wives tend to be, well, unless it's dealing with sort of more neo-charismatic churches. And I've been to a couple of those network things, largely mostly male pastors or all male pastors, depending on which network we're dealing with. And then they'll do these presentations about you got to get your congregants out to vote. Here's some really great tools and data tools to do it. Here's thousands of voter guides at your disposal. Here's videos you can air in church and you need to do it. It's part of your duty as a pastor and you need to get them to understand that they need to vote their biblical values. And the thing about these networks is I've spoken to a lot of pastors. It's not always an easy job. You gotta be there, you've gotta be strong for the community, you've gotta help people with. tragedy, know, there are, you know, deaths and downturns of all kinds and you're the one who has to be really strong and people are coming to you for, you know, because they're emotionally needy and spiritually needy. And I think these networks provide these pastors with a lot of support, you know, the sense that they're part of a larger community, they're doing something right, but it gets them really active. And I think I've heard a lot of pastors who attend some of these gatherings say things like, I thought I could just talk about Jesus and I realized that I can't now. I really need to engage in these issues and get all my congregants engaged in these issues. The movement is really effective. They're also really effective. I have to say, for every way that they've been effective, those who disagree with the anti-democratic agenda can take note. We wouldn't of course wish to emulate any dishonest or craven tactics, but we could see how they're reaching out to people. So for instance, at turning point USA's America Fest, one of the speakers talked about how she's like, if there's an election in November, don't start doing voter outreach in September. The previous March, hold a barbecue. and just have it be like building community and getting to know people in the community and only invite Republicans. And so that when you do the outreach in August or September, they know who you are. There's trust there. You're a trusted voice within the community. So they're just really, the movement is really good, I think, often by working through churches and in turning out their people in disproportionate numbers. And in the last election, we saw American didn't go MAGA. If look at this statistically, the percentage by which presidents win elections, Trump's percentage was actually really small. And he got about the same amount of support as he got in 2020. The difference was that there was depressed support, less enthusiasm on the Democratic side. People didn't, the base didn't turn out in the numbers that they had in 2020. So, you're a lot of lessons to learn from this, yeah. You know, one thing I found surprising that you include in your book was the role that like institutions of higher learning play into this whole scheme, if you will. mean, one in particular that you mentioned was the Claremont Institute. Can you talk a little bit about like what the Claremont Institute is and kind of like what their part is in the big scheme? Yeah, thanks for the question. The Claremont Institute as Think Tank came together in the late 1970s when some graduate students were inspired by the political philosopher, Harry Victor Jaffa. It saw its mission as bolstering democracy at the time, and they wanted to sort of bolster America's founding principles. So it was always conservative, but it's become more reactionary and extreme over the years. They have a fellowship program that you know, is really robust and supports a lot of, you know, sort of ideologically, you know, talent of a certain ideological sort of model and gets these people on a path to real careers in the movement. And it inserts itself in the political process and it's having tremendous success. Today, a number of members of the incoming administration or the nominees are Claremont Society affiliated, I think is offhand of Michael Anton and Russ Vogt. So there are really, I would say, two sides to the leadership of the anti-democratic movement. One is the more traditional Christian nationalist side, and it has these pastors and religious activists, as we've discussed, but the religious right has formed a crucial alliance with the new right. which is centered on the Claremont Institute and Heritage Foundation and some other like-minded think tanks. So a really interesting feature of the Claremont Institute is one of their main intellectual sources comes from, I would say, an an early version of 20th century fascism. There's no other way to say it. They say, they draw on the, Nazi political theorist Carl Schmidt. And the most important idea that they're drawing from is that we're in a state of absolute emergency. The consequences of loss in the political arena are completely dire. We're about to fall off a cliff. We're about to be attacked by terrorists, which is the way Michael Anton put it, basically in an essay about the 2016 election. And they think the people or the folk need a leader who's above the law in order to save them from the forces of liberalism and equality. They call him sometimes a red Caesar. Like, you know, we need a red Caesar. you rather have a Caesar is inevitable. Would you rather have a red Caesar like Trump or a blue Caesar, like a combination of Hillary Clinton and Paul Pot, which is, again, I'm taking that from one of the Claremont writers. There's another thing I wanna say. So this sort of hostility to equality is really at the core of a lot of their ideology. They're profoundly misogynist. They tap into all kinds of, I would say unexamined prejudices as well. They believe as a matter of intellectual conviction that politics is the art of lying and the art of domination and deceit. So they eagerly participate in misinformation sharing and spreading. while at the same time reserving a kind of esoteric truth for themselves and their small clique. And they sort of take this idea from Leo Strauss, another sort of political philosopher who they admire. sort of, who had this idea that there's sort of the kind of messaging you tell everybody else and then the messaging you tell amongst yourselves when you're really speaking amongst the sort of those in the know. And they're always talking about smashing the elites, right? destroying the elites that are sort of destroying our country. But really what they want is power for themselves. They want to be a new elite. Some of them, I would say, are more overtly Christian nationalists than others. Russ Vogt, of course, has called himself a Christian nationalist, or at least infused sort of Christian nationalist goals into a think tank that he's been the head of. But some of them, when you really dig into what they believe, you really start reading their writings. they don't seem to believe in anything more than power, power and influence. And a lot of these sort of intellectuals that come out of the Claremont Institute or the Heritage Foundation and other think tanks, function, I call them billionaire whispers. Like a lot of the billionaires who are funding this movement, they're not necessarily as smart as they think they are, they don't really know how to spend their money. So they rely on these thinkers to tell them how to do it. And we've seen some really interesting leaked video, I believe it was Russ, about speaking to one of these big donors and telling him where to spend his money. Yeah, yeah, we had Wisconsin in coordination with ProPublica, Phoebe Petrovich on. She had covered that story and it was just like, I mean, it was like a training kind of like thing. And you're just like, what? And now he's our OMB director, you know, we're possibly going to be our OMB director. So, yeah, you know, I'm I'm really, really curious on the money aspect. So, you know, I mentioned at the top, I read your book along with Anne Nelson's book, Shadow Network. Two different books, but there are some similar names and characters that show up in both, like one of which is like Leonard Leo, for instance. Big Money Guy. You know, we had Andy Krull on to talk about his story he did with him and the other. since you brought up his name, I just want to say, you know, this fellow named Robert O'Hara, he was a wonderful journalist for the Washington Post. He wrote an extraordinary expose of Leonard Leo several years ago. We've all drawn from it and Robert O'Hara is unfortunately no longer with us, but I really want to honor him. He died in, I believe it was December. Yeah, I wasn't aware of that. Yeah. Yeah, but I really want to honor him and honor the very original work that he did. We all owe him a debt of gratitude. I've quoted him in power worshipers and credited his pieces, and I hope that others who draw from his work do so as well. that's really sweet. But I guess who is Leonard Leo and how is his money kind of filtering its way down into the pews of our churches? Yeah, well Leonard Leo has played a role as a sort of money man of the religious right. He built up the Federalist Society to what it is today, which is a really critical institution that finds and nurtures talent, sort of right-wing talent for the courts. He's also sort of played a really big role in a whole range of organizations around the federal society and that are related to getting the courts. Years ago, Leo said that he recognized that many of the policies he wanted for America would never pass if they were put to a vote. So he thought, well, if you change the courts, if you can control the courts, you can control the country. And it became really clear to me As soon as I started researching Good News Club 16 years ago, I like, how is it legal and possible for this fundamentalist club to come into our public school and confuse little kids, kids who are too young to read, into thinking that their school endorses this particular form of religion? Well, it's because the right-wing legal sphere has been very clever and very strategic in over time building up the right cases to bring to the right courts. to create these novel legal building blocks that would end up destroying the separation of church and state. And they're more than halfway there. So it's really interesting that Leonard Leo is a really sort of pivotal figure in this movement, but there are many other pivotal figures. The movement doesn't have any particular key leader or king. You know what I mean? It's really... Like the leadership cadre is very strong and it's as strong as it is because the movement is also organization driven. So as we've seen with people, know, when one leader blows up, I mean, this is over sex scandal or whatever we have, we saw that happen with who was at Falwell or, know, yeah, I mean, there are others to take his place. And so that's one of the reasons that the movement is as strong as it is. So, I mean, but like, are these, are these, go ahead, go ahead, sorry. And it says something about the funders too. here's the thing about, so Barry's side. So the movement's funders are, you know, include people like Barry's side, the court who is Jewish, the corkeries who are Catholic, the DeVos Prince family, juggernaut who come from a more sort of reformed tradition, evangelicals like the Wilkes brothers, like Tim Dunn. So religiously they're all over. over the place. But what they really are after is a kind of policies that are going to not only justify their massive concentrations of wealth, but also increase them. They want their wealth validated and increased. So Berryside donated $1.6 billion, $1.6 billion, to form an organization called the Marble Freedom Trust, which is supposed to funnel money into, is funneling money into these... right-wing and anti-democratic politics. Who does he put in charge of it? Leonard Leo. Now, do you think Barry Side really cares about same-sex marriage? I don't think so at all. But these billionaires know that they need to fund the culture wars because that's how you get the little people to vote. You sort of promote these initiatives that are getting the little people to vote on these identity issues, right? You get them upset about abortion or... you know, get some, you know, trans issue over there, which is like a massive distraction for the right. They love it because it just, you know, it's an identity issue that frankly has very little relevance to most people's lives. So they, they get people focused on that. And then they're not looking at the fact that they're, they're supporting politicians whose policies are actually, you know, destroying their public schools, eroding rights for the workforce, making it harder for American families to succeed. They're really afraid of population that might sort of adopt what they think of as socially destabilizing moves or moves that are going to sort of interfere with their accumulation of wealth. I think it's hard to, I mean, it's maybe a side issue, but I think it's hard to grasp the extent to which these very rich people, know, you know, multi, multi, multi millionaires and billionaires live in these silos. They almost like live in these islands. And so they're surrounded by people who are affirming them all the time because their salaries depend on it. But they're really, like sometimes they can like from the walls of their walled off city, they can sometimes hear the cries of people on the other side who are accusing them rightly of unearned wealth and not paying their fair share of taxes or et cetera. And they're really afraid of those people. And they're really afraid that the people are gonna sort of come after them one day with proverbial pitchforks and actually make them pay their fair share of taxes and make them stop polluting the environment and eroding rights for the workforce. And so they're sort of all in on these very punitive politics. Yeah, you know, so with the issue of abortion and maybe some of these other culture war issues, like I'm having a hard time understanding what the return on investment is. And I think you alluded a little bit to it. Like you get sort of these, you know, these little people activated. They go to the polls, they vote against this thing, you know, vote against the candidate that's for those things because the candidate that is against them. are going to do all these other things that are going to make them wealthy. Is that kind of like an accurate kind of like description of how the money people are getting rich off this stuff? Yeah, I mean, I think the important thing to stress here is that the deeper motivations of the funders are not always reasonable or rational. And I think this process is actually making them less reasonable. And in many instances, it's really based on fear. Now, of course, they do want their tax cuts. They do want to remove government oversight from their monopolistic and in many instances, I would say anti-environmental activities. Some of them are involved in the fossil fuel business, so they don't want sort of any kind of concern or awareness even over environmental degradation, climate issues, which now they can just call woke and try and make it go away. But at the same time, they also want government protections for their businesses. So there is definitely some narrow economic self-interest involved. But what I found is that the funders often have these deeper and almost like more neurotic motivations for what they do. They want validation for their wealth. They want validation for their own perceptions of self-worth. And they're extremely sensitive to criticism that much of that wealth is parasitic. So I think it's those two things. Again, I think these psychological anxieties have... led them to make this colossally bad bet. They're betting that the destruction of democracy is going to advance their long-term interests. And it's a stupid bet. mean, if not just for themselves, what about for their children or grandchildren if they have them? And we have to look back at the stupid bets that the steel and chemical industrialists made in their dealings with the Nazis. In the end, it didn't work out for them either. So I think destroying democracy is just bad for everyone, full stop. Yeah, you know, I I'm a part of a couple different really wild Facebook groups that I joined around like the COVID-19 vaccination debacle. And one of the one of the Facebook groups I remember of are like for all federal employees, you know, basically they're just like, I'm not getting the jab. And, know, there's all this sort of like mega right, right leaning stuff. And with the announcement about severance buyout for government workers or or whatnot, it's it's it's really interesting. And maybe I could be guilty of a bit of schadenfreude, I'm sure. But like there's like post on there like, yeah, finally Trump is gonna give it to them. And then there's like posts like, wait a minute, I think this might affect me. wait a minute, this is a terrible idea. Wait a minute, I've been working at home for blah, blah, you know, like I requested that. And then you're just like, so people are now realizing that the person that you supported may not necessarily have your best interests at heart, which I mean, that's. funny but not funny because you know real lives whatever but but i i am curious though like why isn't all these money people trying to go after like the johnson amendment or you know something like that if if they if i'm sure they could probably fund a pretty significant and effective campaign to get that so then they don't have to worry about you know handcuffs are off kind of thing The handcuffs are off. mean, you know, the Johnson amendment has been dead on the water for a really long time. was at Ralph Reed's Faith and Freedom Coalition sort of annual gathering. It's called Road to Majority. And there was a speaker there from First Liberty Institute who made a joke. He said some, was talking about all the stuff that church, all the great stuff churches are doing to basically campaign. And a woman raised her hand. She said, I'm really confused. Like, what about the Johnson Amendment? Is that still happening? And he joked. He said, well, if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, did it really happen? And the entire audience laughed. And he said, it's never been, like, not a single church has been prosecuted for the Johnson Amendment. And if somebody wants to mount a case about that, we would love to take it. Wow, yeah. It seems like the only churches that seem really concerned about the Johnson Amendment are moderate and progressive churches that are like, we don't want to violate the rules because we respect the rules. But this is a movement that frankly doesn't respect the rules because it doesn't respect. democracy. It's really defined more by what it wants to tear down than what it wants to create. I think the versions of what it seems to want to create harken back to the fantasy of the past that never actually existed the way they think that it did. You know, this is a question I probably should have asked you earlier, you mentioned the Christian right. Power Worshippers kind of focuses on Christian nationalism. Like, are the two the same? And if not, what are the ways in which they're different? Well, the Christian right, different people use different terms to refer to this, to what we're seeing in our politics today. I use the term religious nationalism in the subtitle of my book, The Power Worshippers, Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, precisely to make. clear its similarities with other forms of religious nationalism around the world. So when leaders like Vladimir Putin in Russia or leaders in Iran or Erdogan in Turkey or Orban in Hungary, when these leaders want to consolidate a more authoritarian form of political power, they bind themselves very tightly to ultra conservative religious leaders in their own countries in order to sort of, you fortify that autocratic power. And they're doing so not just to create a more theocratic governance, and of course they'll do that though. The state will have an official religion, their laws may be based to varying degrees on certain holy texts, but also to squelch any criticism, any investigation of their their cronyism and their kleptocracy and the way that they're handing off pieces of the public treasury to loyalists to squelch any investigation of harmful things they may be doing to their own people. And these are honestly best described as autocracies with very little tolerance for political opposition and very little tolerance, you know, a suppression of free speech. I mean, one of the things that these autocratic powers often do in the sort of these religious nationalist autocratic powers do is they arrest journalists, they arrest academics that they don't like. I mean, if you're in Russia, you know, there's a lot of people falling out of windows. There's just like a lot of really terrible stuff that happens in these contexts. So religious nationalism, again, like authoritarianism is something it's like a political dynamic that afflicts a political system. It's not just a set of attitudes. that are embraced by the rank and file. I think a lot of times when people talk about the Christian right, they're speaking more in a specifically American context. you know, I think that people, you know, everybody sort of views all the different writers who cover this stuff come from different perspectives and emphasize different features of the movement. And I think it's wonderful that people are using the language that that makes sense to them in order to describe it. But I like the term religious nationalism because it takes it out of the American context and shows that this sort of, it's like authoritarianism, know, that's not a specifically American thing. It occurs in different forms all over the world. And of course there are nuances specific to different countries, but there are some similarities as well. How does the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 kind of play into the broader agenda of the Christian right? 2025, that's really interesting. Do you remember when Trump said, oh, I'm not going to implement project 2025. I have no idea what this is. Yeah, and I totally believed him 100%. I know we all did. And he was like, you know, promise that this is how it was. Well, the thing is, Project 2025 is the ideological backbone of the movement. And it's the, you know, it's being implemented by the new administration. Trump's promises, of course, were a lie. It represents a fusion of Christian nationalist ideology with new right ideology. But its most important working elements at this stage of the game, early in Trump's presidency, are frankly on the side of the new right. That part of the program is having the biggest impact right now and is most likely to be significant in its efforts to what they call, you know, deconstruct the administrative state. I talk in Manualizing God about what they mean by that. You know, what they mean by that is frankly delusional. It comes down to a little more than the simple destruction of vital government functions. It's political performance, and it's performance at the expense of actual governance. It's at the expense of actually making life better for the American people. The consequences of this destruction are going to come due over time, and in the meantime, there's going to be a lot of suffering. So you've got to ask, why does somebody like Russ votes? He's a bona fide Christian nationalist architect of Project 2025. Why does he want to destroy the administrative apparatus that holds together everything from air traffic control to national parks to VA suicide hotlines or health research grants? Like, why does he want to do that? And it comes down to the hatred of expertise. These folks have basically projected their own anxieties and frustrations with the culture onto a demonic, supposedly demonic board. And they treat government as a synonym for oppressive bureaucracy. Their ideology valorizes exercises of what they see as masculine power. And that simply just doesn't leave space for professionalism and accountability. and expertise, which are things that a modern democracy needs to function well. Yeah, I see a lot of this angst against expertise with the fundamentalist movement. Because if I recall, there was a big... push against, you know, viewing the Bible as anything else but inerrant. And as, you know, Bible colleges started popping up and people really start to look at the stuff and archaeology and, you know, folks are looking at the Bible in a completely different way. You know, I mean, I've got a book, like, we talked to Trimper Longman. He's a biblical scholar, a really great guy. He wrote a book called The Old Testament as Literature. And at the time, I didn't realize, like, how sort of like taboo that probably was for him to do like an Old Testamentist literature. But it kind of makes sense now because if you get rid of the experts and you say, we're just gonna rely on the inerrancy of the Bible and it says right here, know, like a man shall not lay with another man. So there it is, like just take it point blank. You know, there's no other way to interpret that scripture. So, i.e. therefore gay. you know, marriage is wrong. So I think that that's really important. Are there like other areas that the movement is focusing on that's kind of like under kind of the surface that the public isn't necessarily picking up on or is aware about right now, but, you know, give it like 10 years and it'll be like the top of the, it'll be the number one issue. unfortunately, I left my crystal ball in the other room. I wish I did have it. one thing that we're seeing is that sort of destruction of expertise, as you said, because experts will interfere with their absolute power. I mean, this is where the lies come in too. You can separate people from the facts and it makes them so much easier to control. I think that the consequences over time were really gonna depend quite a lot on whether there's appetite for pushback and a kind of appetite to sort of really have some moral courage at this important moment. Yeah, you you, you mentioned about how the, the activity of the Christian rite go relatively unrecognized by the public, which is, which is really sad. mean, like you've got great reporters like yourself that are out there on the beat, you know, trying to like inform us about, what's happening? But then you've got like other meat organizations, you know, that are doing sort of like stories that are adjacent, but they're not necessarily talking about like kind of the root. For instance, Vance was out doing some media hits and had talked about this, gosh, I'm going to ruin it, love levels and love yourself and then your family and then your neighbor and just branch it out. why is that? are the activities of the Christian right just being ignored, you think? One of the problems is that a lot of the reporting on the issue has been really sidelined by the media because when the religion reporting is done, it's done by religion reporters, many of whom are frankly unable to recognize the political aspects of the movement. And then there are course fantastic exceptions to this rule. I mean, so many, I can't even mention them here. But unfortunately, think also political reporters have often wanted to shy away from the religious aspects of it. So there haven't been enough people who are willing to sort of recognize the fusion, like the exploitation of religion for politics and power and can sort of understand both sides of that story. So, like, are you getting the sense that it's like, for the same reason that the Johnson Amendment stuff doesn't get prosecuted, because, like, the report's like, I'm not touching that, you know? definitely true with a lot of the religion stuff because listen, I mean, how do you intimidate a liberal person? You call them intolerant. It's like, no, I don't want to be intolerant. And we all want to respect one another's faith. None of us want to sort of have that kind of thing. it makes it harder to call out the instances where religion is being exploited and where it's being weaponized. I think when you're looking at this movement, it's hard to overstate the extent to which the politics leads the religion, not the other way around. You know, I'm just just a couple more questions if you if you got time the you know, so with with the incoming administration, Trump has already kind of assembled a, you know, rock star team of Christian nationalists like to serve in this administration to include, you know, Russell Vaught, know, Pete Hegeseth and others like I know you're Chris the balls in the other room, but you've been doing this long enough to at least. you know, see the telltale signs of what could happen and or policies that these, you know, figures have been pushing over the years. Like, do you think the Trump administration would be a net positive for this Christian right movement or, you know, Trump's just going to do what Trump's going to do? Well, I want to say, first of all, I'm old enough to remember the first Trump administration, at least. And I would say a lot of his proposed policies are going to fail through incompetence or because they're unimplementable or because it will get snarled up in the courts. There's no feature of the American political system as of yet that means that we're going to have MAGA rule forever. I also remember the first Trump administration, there was a kind of revolving door of people coming in and then all of a sudden, you know, they get on his bad side and then they're out and that's the worst person in the world. So I think we can expect more of that. Again, you know, I'm just, you know, kind of just going off the top of my head here because my crystal ball is in the other. I know. That doesn't mean there won't be a lot of damage done. I mean, look at the pardons of the anti-abortion folks, the activists who violated federal law, acted really violently and disruptively, resulting in personal injury to people who were working in abortion clinics and also using chains and bike blocks to block access for people who are trying to access reproductive care. including a woman who was experiencing labor pains and Trump pardoned them and as a reward for this movement supporting him and they seem to be taking this reward as a message, like we can keep doing this and we'll get pardoned so we can keep being sort of violent and keep breaking the law. Look at the pardon of the January 6th insurrectionists. We know what they did. We saw it on, you know, we've seen it on TV. They attacked police officers. They, you know, attacked the Capitol. They were incredibly violent. And he's done these blanket pardons. And he's basically saying, you know, he's setting the stage for a kind of cadre of people who will be absolute loyalists and who will be willing to do a similar thing if he just kind of says the word. So, I mean, that's just to start. It's just like two little things that he's done that are going to be bad. we, and many of those, of course, we know those insurrectionists were egged on by religious nationalist leaders. were, some of those leaders actually riled up the crowd in advance of the attack on the Capitol and hailed it. And then, you know, spread the lie, of course, of the... that the 2020 election was stolen. So he will empower this movement. He's already doing it. But I'm not saying that it's, I think that, you there's a lot that can be done and should be done, frankly. I am curious like knowing you and your writing and just your your care of detail and accuracy I'm guessing that probably everything that you've been investigating did not make it into the book I'm I'm curious. I'm like what's what's one thing that you know didn't make it into the book for a variety of different reasons You know your publishers like yeah, that's like we can't have a thousand page book. You know like So like what's one thing that didn't make it into the book that you wish had? That's always some of the side conversations that are the most revealing. I think you're just going to have to wait for the next book, to be honest. Spoken like a true author. Okay, so what do you hope readers take away from Money Lies in God? know, like if you were to receive fan mail about your book, what would you want it to say? really want people to understand, when people ask, how did this happen? I feel like I've written my three books to show how it happened, right? But sort of within that sort of explanation of why it happened and how it happened are recommendations about things that we can do. I think that on the sort of pro-democracy side, there's been a lack of investment in infrastructure. It's not that there's not money on the pro-democracy side, but people tend to invest in individual politicians or sometimes in technocratic solutions or in policy groups that are operating in silo. We need people to talk to one another and we need to work on sort of a much broader base. And that points to the fact that we're going to need a big tent. We need to not abandon the purity test. We're not going to agree on everything, nor should we in a democracy as large and pluralistic. as ours, but if we can agree on the core principles of democracy, of equality and pluralism and justice, and I think we can work together a lot. I really wanted to show the movement's determination and their tactical strategies in order to encourage people on the pro-democracy side to be determined. I remember... know, David Barton, who I've featured in each of my books, in my last book I called him the where's Waldo of the Christian nationalist movement because he's everywhere. He's doing this, he's doing that. He's, working with politicians. He's working with pastors. You know, he's got these various initiatives. You know, he said in one of his books, he said, arm yourself with the mentality of a distance runner, not a sprinter. And he's right. This is like what those of us who wish to form a more perfect union would like to do. We need to arm ourselves with the mentality of a distance runner and not a sprinter. I think about somebody like Ralph Reed, who has had a faith and freedom coalition. He said, pay no attention to the polls. Our numbers are shrinking. All that matters is who turns out on election day. Well, I happen to believe that our numbers are not shrinking. Those of us, I think more Americans would prefer to live in a democracy than some sort of kleptocratic theocracy. a theocratic autocracy, right? But what we really need to focus on is turning the numbers out on election day, not taking voters for granted, speaking to people in sort of terms and language that they can use and help them really understand how this relates to their own lives. So there's that. Wow. Well, so this episode is released on your book release day. So if you but we recorded before your book release day. So we're actually in the past if you're watching this. So so like, assuming we we go in the future, how can people get your book? Where is it sold? so much. You can get it anywhere books are sold. Am I allowed to talk about Amazon? Anywhere. Bookshop is on Amazon Bookshop. You can ask your local book dealer to carry it. And you can follow my work at KatherineStewart.me. I am on Blue Sky as Katherine Stewart at Blue Sky something. And I'm also on Twitter. half S Stewart, there are two S's. So I remain on that platform as well. Are you posting to both? Yeah, a little bit, but I'm kind of shambolic about my social media engagement I have to say I'm not like one of these people who's like posting constantly and I got stuff to do I got articles to write I got you know great people like you to talk to and Yeah yeah, and I'm glad to see that you're still calling it Twitter. I had an argument with a friend of mine. He's like, it's X. And I'm like, as long as I can still type in Twitter.com and it takes me to the website, it's Twitter. was like, why else would that exist? So, you know, there you of Twitter, just want like, you know, again, why are we allowing all these billionaires to bigfoot all over our politics? Why is the Trump administration putting somebody like Musk in charge of, you know, cutting services for poor people or people who are struggling to make it work? I mean, these kinds of schisms within, you know, what the movement claims it's doing and what it's actually doing. These can be highlighted and they should be. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, imagine if like, you know, Leonard Leo was Elon Musk. I mean, we'd be in all kinds of trouble, you know? But, you know, what... Musk-like money at his back. They can spend $230 million a year from Marvel Freedom without touching the nut. So a lot of money can buy a lot of law and influence politics in a big way. We need to address that issue of money and politics as a longer-term goal. Definitely. Well, thanks so much, Catherine, for coming by. Always a pleasure to speak with you. Yeah, love all the work you're doing. up the fight. And for my audience, make sure you go out and buy this book. You will not regret it. And while you're at it, pick up The Pyre Worshippers 2. It's a really, really great read. I've read it twice, just to make sure I really understand it. And I've only done one reading of Money, Lies, and God, but I do intend on doing a little bit more. in depth reading it. I'll probably just email you and be like, does this mean? I should have asked you. So thanks again. Thanks to our audience. And as always, make sure you keep your conversations not right or left, but up. And we'll see you all next time. Take care. Bye bye.