How Evangelicals Betrayed Jesus for Power – A Conversation with Amy Hawk

In this episode, Will Wright and Pastor Josh Burtram speak with Amy Hawk, author of The Judas Effect: How Evangelicals Betray Jesus for Power. Once a hyper-patriotic evangelical leader, Amy shares her journey of disillusionment during the 2016 election when Donald Trump became the Republican nominee. She opens up about her father’s legacy as a Vietnam War hero, her evolving faith journey, and the painful decision to step away from the white evangelical church. Hawk discusses how Trumpism has infiltrated the evangelical community, drawing parallels between Judas’ betrayal and how evangelical leaders have sacrificed integrity for political power. Amy also details how her faith was renewed through studying the life of Jesus and the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., ultimately leading her to a spiritual community outside traditional evangelical circles.

Guest Bio:
Amy Hawk is the author of The Judas Effect: How Evangelicals Betray Jesus for Power. Once a devoted evangelical leader, Amy experienced a profound faith crisis during the 2016 election when she witnessed the rise of Trumpism within the evangelical church. Now, she speaks out against the manipulation of Christianity for political gain and offers daily Bible teachings on her YouTube channel and social media.

Resources & Links:

The Judas Effect: How Evangelicals Betray Jesus for Power by Amy Hawk – Purchase Link on her website for signed copies: https://www.amyhawk.com

Transcript

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Hey, welcome back, Faithful Politics listeners and watchers. If you're watching on our YouTube channel, I am your political host. We're right. I forgot who I was for second. And I'm joined by my faithful host, Pastor Josh Bertram. What's going on, Josh? Hey, well, it's good to see you. Yeah, it's good to be seeing and we are joined today by none other than Amy Hawk, who is an author of the Judas Effect, How Evangelicals Betray Jesus for Power. She was once a devoted, hyper patriotic evangelical leader and experienced a bit of a faith crisis during the 2016 election, which she will tell us all about. And she has a pretty compelling story to tell us all about heartbreak, resilience, renewed faith. oh and just what she thinks about the church in general. So we were just so happy to have her on the show and yeah, welcome to the show, Amy. Thank you so much for having me, you guys. I'm really happy to be here. Yeah, we're really glad to have you. Just to clarify, you're not related to Tony Hawk, right? I'm not, but my husband is a skateboarder and he loves when people ask that question. It's like his hero, one of his heroes. That is awesome. I was never really a skater. I was more of a BMX biker guy. I remember like, I grew up in California. And as part of a BMX, you know, bike gang, don't know if we're in elementary school, you know, but like, we don't used to always get upset when, like, you know, we see these skaters in like a big parking lot because that was the same place that we could ride, you know, and we're just like, look at you skaters grinding on this waxed up curb, you know, and like, and we go over there and we're like, OK, they don't really need this much wax. It's way too much wax, you know, like what are they doing with all this wax? uh So anyways, apologies to any skaters out there who's curbed. I've totally destroyed. uh yeah, anyways to you, hyper patriotic. uh Tell us your story. Why were you once hyper patriotic and now you are like less subtly patriotic? Yes, you can say that. I grew up the daughter of a war hero. My dad was a prisoner of war in Vietnam in the Hanoi Hilton with John McCain. And so he was pretty well known in our town. And you know, like you would go somewhere, you'd go to the grocery store, go to a restaurant, people generally knew who Jim Shively was. And I was his daughter. And so I took a lot of pride in the fact that my dad was an American hero and he was treated that way. He did a lot of, you know, speaking engagements. And when people heard that my last name was Shively, they connected me with him. And so I think that my young heart just, uh, I was just a very hyper patriotic child even. I just loved America, know, knew all the capitals and uh I think, you know, having uh a uh father that's a war hero will kind of do that to you. It becomes kind of part of your identity. So that's why I say that. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You know, it's uh interesting when you have people who have served in the armed forces, which Will is a veteran, by the way, and so well served in our armed forces. Yes, absolutely. you know, it gives you such a... It gives you a... Especially when these people that you love, it gives you a deeper connection. almost to this country and to like the mission of our country, the thing that we're here to do, right? This kind of patriotic idea. And yet we all have to have at times we are critical of our country, critical of the things that are going on. And we do that purposefully. because we're supposed to be able to do that and we're supposed to be able to talk and make this country better because of that. you know, it's interesting because in 2016, when I saw that Trump was going to be running for the Republican nomination, I mean, I couldn't believe it, to be honest with you, when I first found that out. And I had been a Republican my entire life and I was just like, what in the world? can't, you know, what are we doing here? It was wild. What, story involves some issues that were happening right in 2016, moving from where you were and then seeing kind of how things were starting to shift. What was the initial reaction when... You kind of saw Trump become the Republican nominee and then maybe you could talk about kind of your breaking point, the story there surrounding that. Well, I was devastated because by that point he had already made disparaging comments about John McCain, which as you can imagine, filled me with rage. My dad was shot down from a fighter pilot. My dad was obviously extremely courageous man and he was shot down over Hanoi and held in captivity for six years. I almost could not believe that any true patriot of America who had served or had a family member who served could possibly remotely even vote for a man who would disparage some of our nation's finest heroes. And so that was personally devastating for me. And then because I was also a Christian, I started looking at him through the lens of the things that he was doing and saying that to me were he was kind of putting up this facade of Following Christ like, know, I'm gonna be here for the evangelicals. I'm gonna give you everything you want uh But he had no actual substance of it and to me that was a huge huge red flag So yeah, and it's been a journey ever since then of trying to figure out how he has gone about seducing so many people and really how to warn em about him, about who he really is. You know, like part of your story as well, I mean, it's not only about m sort of your journey from being this hyper patriot, um but it also involves like your your faith as well. And I'd love for you to say you alluded a little bit just now and in your book, I'd love for you just kind of just talk to us about your faith journey, you know, starting from whenever, you know, if you grew up in the church or her whatnot. You know, the things that you were kind of taught to believe about Jesus and the Bible, and then how your beliefs intersected with how you felt about, you know, Trump, who garnered like 80 % of the evangelical vote in 2016. Okay, well, neither my husband nor I were actually raised in the church, but we were both raised in homes that were big on kindness and hospitality and following the golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. My mom impressed that upon us from the time we were very small. The reason that we didn't go... to church when I was growing up is because both of my parents had been raised in the church and both of them saw extreme hypocrisy ah that they didn't want to raise us in the church. They wanted to raise us with Christian values but outside the church. So it's a very interesting story. I think a lot of people of my generation didn't have parents who uh were kind of clued into that, but mine were. But when my husband and I got married, we decided to go to church and we weren't very even sure where we stood with God or... If we were looking for him, we went with some friends who invited us to go. We were all in our young twenties. And so we thought, okay, we'll just go a few times and see what it's about. And then we'll just go back to our regular lives. We kind of looked at church as like if it was a hobby you would do on the weekends, like tennis or golf. And so we went a few times and those messages that we heard, we really connected with. So this would have been back like 1999 in the early 2000s. The message was of kindness towards neighbors. generosity of spirit. You have a loving father in heaven and he loves you so much and he wants you to go out and share his love with the world and so we could easily embrace this message. And then we both got into Bible studies. And the next thing you know, I'm on staff at the church. My husband uh was leading a major ministry. I say it's funny because in the space of three years, we went from not even knowing if we believed in God to leading large ministries in a large church. So we dove into evangelical waters. head first and we did not come up for error until 2016. That is pretty wild. I shared a story with Josh recently about when I, uh the first church I ever attended was with my wife, because I wasn't raised in a church either, but my wife is a PK. She has a pastor's kid. ah So we went to this church and within probably the first month I was on stage leading worship and didn't even know enough about. like worship songs. like, hey, I don't know any like what's that one song, hallelujah? Like, let's just play that one. And then and my wife's like, that's not a worship song. And I'm like, what? It's got the word hallelujah in it. You know, I'm like, Christians are so weird. So I feel you. I totally feel you on this. But what what what what where we live in at the time and what what church oh were you going to? So we were in Spokane, Washington at that time. We were both raised in Spokane. We met in junior high and started dating after college. And so both of our families were there. we, so we went to church there uh for about 10 years and I was on staff. I, uh became the, I have a background in communications and so I became the communications director and then women's ministry leader. And then I opened a prayer and healing room. uh so I was, we were very involved to say the least. Like if the doors of the church were unlocked, we were there. Saturday night, Sunday morning, Wednesday, if there's a discipleship or. meeting on Thursday, we were always there. We raised our kids in that church. And then we moved to Oregon in 2010. And then we got into another church and same type of thing. I started teaching discipleship classes, Sunday Bible study for adults in the evening. And my husband became an elder. worship leader. that's where we were. It was in Assemblies of God uh in 2016 when our entire world turned upside down because we, church was our thing. Like our, I like to say, my car went from home to the private Christian school our kids were at to church and back again. And I just made this continuous circle almost every day. And that's where we went. That's how we lived. That's what we did. When we moved here, we didn't know anybody. So the church was our family now and our friends. I mean, I just can't even tell you how 2016 changed everything for us. It changed our entire lives. Walk me through that a little bit because you see that Donald Trump, he's the nominee and you start noticing Christians and the way that they're talking about Donald Trump, even the way he's positioning himself in one of the chapters you talk about is this sense of like Trump's... false, being like a false Messiah. So work through some of this. What happened in 2016? Obviously we know the election, but what was it about that and how did that affect your time at the church that created this issue? Well, so even in 2015, like leading up to the election, I was already having a lot of tension and anxiety in my spirit whenever I saw Donald Trump and the way that he spoke and presented himself so arrogantly and boastfully saying that he was here to save us. I was already getting a lot of, you know, red flags. So then... I see him mocking the disabled journalist and I just am watching with my eyes and I'm seeing what I saw and I'm going, okay, Lord, I know that this is the Republican candidate. And of course I've been trained the last 20 years in the church. You only vote Republican. There's no other option. And uh So I, at this time, I started crying out to the Lord. I mean, that's how anxious I was about all of this. And I started, it's always been my practice to read the scriptures and to journal with God what I'm thinking and feeling. Well, more and more in my journal, I felt impressed by scriptures about false leaders. that I had never seen before, even though I had been studying the Bible for 20 years. All of a sudden, these scriptures are like lifting themselves off the page. I'm just like, I don't even think I want to see this, but this is what I'm seeing in scripture. This is what I'm seeing and hearing in real life. Also at that time, I was leading a women's... ministry. So I was regularly praying for women. Many women who come for prayer have been hurt. They've been assaulted or molested. They've got some kind of background of abuse and this is what they need prayer for. ah And so I have prayed for so many women over those years and when I lay hands on woman I try to listen to the Lord for his words for her because She doesn't need to hear from me. She needs comfort and healing From the healer who can heal the broken-hearted and so I'm always very quiet. I want to really impart his words his Comfort his attitude toward her so I know the Lord's voice for women I know his voice for women. I've heard his voice for women. And when I heard Donald Trump's voice on that Access Hollywood tape, I heard the enemy's voice for women. I heard somebody who's so proud, so boastful, so arrogant, so greedy, so lustful that he thinks that he can take what isn't his. And I know how God feels about that because I've prayed to him enough. I know how he feels. So I had a lot of righteous anger in my spirit when I heard that Axis Hollywood tape. And I just went upstairs and I said, okay, Lord, this is it. Like, I'm not voting for him. I just told the Lord, I'm sorry. I know he's the Republican. I will not vote for him because I know what hell sounds like. And that was it. And I threw open my Bible to the book of Jude. I never read the book of Jude. I had no idea what Jude was about even. But somehow I just felt impressed to read the book of Jude. And I had just gotten a message version of my Bible uh for Christmas. And so I had this message version. And I opened it up. And the book of Jude is about dangerous... false men infiltrating the church for their own benefit, for their own glory, grabbing anything they can get their hands on. These are the words in the message translation. And I knew right then, God is, this is what the Lord is telling me. And, And I just knew he is, he's grabbing anything he can get his hands on. And if that means partnering with the evangelical church, that's what he's going to do to elevate himself. He is feasting without reverence for God with God's people so that they will elevate him. And that's when I started, I realized God was saying all of this journaling you've been doing with me is actually a book. And so there's a chapter called Grabbing Anything. Yeah, you know, and I want to talk about that. So the title, The Judas Effect, I always ask this from authors because having spoken to so many, I think I get a good sense of like, was this title chosen by the writer or was it chosen by the editor? So I'm always careful about like when I ask people about the titles of their book, but could you maybe talk a little bit about The Judas Effect? and the subheading too, the how evangelicals betrayed Jesus for power. So give us the history of the Judas effect. Okay, well, uh I started researching Judas because this whole thing started feeling like a huge betrayal to me. I started seeing that some of the leaders in the evangelical church, they knew what Trump was about. They knew he was misogynistic. They knew he was abusive. They knew he was a criminal. I mean, it takes a very easy... Google search to find out how he has treated his business partners and uh people that have worked for him in the past by not paying them and stuff. And so, like, it's not hard to figure this guy out, but they were willing to make that partnership with a bully, with uh a self-professed abuser of women. for political power. And I started realizing that political power, really the root of that, you can make it sound as good as you want to, we're gonna bring God to America. The root of that is greed. The root of that idol worship of wanting power and control over America, it's greed, it's Judas. And so then I started researching more about Judas and I'm realizing Judas hung out with Jesus. He hung out with the disciples. He did what Jesus presumably told him to do. But his heart was defiled by his own greed. And that is what caused him to betray the values and the integrity and the dignity of the Christ that he was claiming to follow. And that is exactly what I believe the church has done. I believe that they have amassed political power for themselves, hiding behind God to do this, pretending that this is what God wants. And in the meantime, our capacity for telling the truth, our integrity, our dignity has... uh we have betrayed our mission which is to represent Christ, to represent him well on earth, not to come with dominion over the top of people and tell them how this country should be. That's not Jesus, that's an idol, that's a power grab. So that's why I named it the Judas Effect. how evangelicals betrayed Jesus for power. And I think this has been going for a long time. uh And it's continuing to this day. think some people are starting to connect the dots here, uh but many aren't. I mean, they're just in it. They're just in it with him. Yeah, there's no doubt. We've done a lot of work on Christian nationalism on the show. We've done a lot of work looking at things like the Seven Mountain Mandate um and the new apostolic Reformation and um things that get connected with kind of the sense of this Christian nationalist agenda, which the idea is that we want America to be Christian, not people in America to be Christian in the sense that we want people to know Jesus, which, know, Will and I are huge fans of Jesus and people knowing Jesus. But it's about we want a particular Christian culture and we want everyone to be uh forced essentially to be a part of that culture or to look like that culture and represent that culture and mirror that culture. And so we've done a lot of work trying to work through that. And I'm curious when you started to, like when you went through this journey of seeing what was going on with Donald Trump, of sensing that this isn't right, this isn't the right thing, kind of knowing inside this deep intuition about what is a voice that is... from God, what is a voice that is not from God, from the enemy, which I think is awesome. And so the question that I have is like, you started to notice that, what happened in the church itself or even among different evangelicals in your circles, how was that received? by the people around you. Not well. Not well. So that therein lies the trauma of the whole thing is that I was leading a prayer. You know, we were leaders in the church. So I was leading a prayer and ministry. I had people coming up, let's, you know, let's pray for Donald Trump, you know, and I'd have to say. I'm not going to pray for him to be president. It started to get to where we just didn't feel comfortable in our congregation. And I want to make it very clear that it wasn't our lead pastor. He understood how my husband and I felt, and he was very understanding and a very good shepherd. But when I started looking up the chain of authority in the Assemblies of God at some of the statements that they were making, I became very uncomfortable that, you know, if there are leaders in positions of authority that are pushing him forward and uh enabling and defending and celebrating and pushing their sheep toward him essentially, we can't be part of that because we can't be under that type of authority. So uh I had a blog at that time, I'm a writer. I had a book come out previous to this and so people were used to seeing my writings. Well, I started being more more vocal about how uh uncomfortable we felt with the... Trumpism that was coming into the church and I started realizing it's not just assemblies of God. This is this is a evangelical thing and so we had to make the very hard and difficult decision to step out of white evangelicalism because we started sensing that there was a contamination in the waters. And we had been swimming in them for so long that we didn't recognize it until 2016. But it became very apparent that some of what some of the doctrines that we were being taught were our like Republican doctrines that are not Jesus doctrines. And so there's just too much crossover. And that's so it was it was excruciatingly painful. to step out, but we knew it was the right thing to do for our own journey with Christ. And oh there was some shunning, oh which I know other people that have left churches have said that they've experienced and that's always hard. But so Amy, when you stepped out of the experience, talk to me about that more. How did you actually come to that place where you're like, yeah, I need to step out of the white evangelical experience? How did you know what that was? What does that mean? Did you start going to a Catholic church or did you stop going to church or did you... do something different? What did that mean that you guys stepped out and what did that experience feel like for you? I'd love for you to go into more depth on that. yes, and I call it the white evangelical church. I'm not sure if that's what to call it, but at that time we started listening to more black preachers uh like Charlie Dakes and Otis Moss and you know I've always followed uh Dr. Bernice King and I started connecting the dots like they're not falling for this Trumpism. Like, I feel like they're not swimming in the same waters I'm swimming in. And so that's why I say we didn't necessarily step out of evangelicalism altogether. I still have a sense in my spirit. I still want people to know the good news of Jesus. It's just that ah we felt more comfortable than, you know, listening to some of our Black leaders who we felt were onto him and you know steering more capable of steering us in in the right direction so that's that's what we did. We took a little bit of a break just all together just to kind of get our heads on straight and listen to God and it happened to be 2020 I think. by the time we actually did it. So it made sense uh to take a break from going to church for a while. And then uh now we do a little home church. We love it. ah We take communion with friends. We uh celebrate God with friends. We feel very... happy. Jesus, we didn't leave Jesus behind and he didn't let go of us for one second. ah We just switched venues. That's really cool. just to em clarify about the white evangelical thing, because I just wrote a sub-stack about this recently about uh why that term resonates differently with different groups. And it's my belief that um white evangelicals, just as a voting bloc, ah have very predictable patterns that show up in the data, whether you're looking at Barna Group or PRI or Pew, this voting block typically will feel a certain way about Trump and about certain of his actions. So sometimes when people hear the term White Evangelical, they're just like, well, why are you singling us out? It's because this particular group, not everybody, but this particular group as a whole generally votes a certain way. And that's adventurous to a lot of different people. you know, what I wanted to ask you was, you so you reached this point in your spiritual walk, your political walk, you're like, wait a minute, like things aren't like. I thought they should be or are or, you know, we're all Christians, but we're not all acting like Christians, you know, and then you kind of start putting the pieces together in your, you know, for the the, you know, for the lack of a better word, like you become woke all of a sudden. Like, like, because because because because to some degree, you're like, wait a minute, like this has been here all along. And like, all of a sudden, like, I realized, like, what the heck? Like, I'm curious, like, how did what did you do? Or who? whose, I don't know, works did you pursue to try to better understand kind of the moment that you're in? Because having done this podcast for five years, we've spoken to a lot of different really, really phenomenal experts in this field. So I'm just kind of curious. I'm like, who did you go to to kind of learn more about what's happening around you? Well, to tell you the truth, I started reading Martin Luther King's speeches because I have always considered him prophetic and hearing from God. And so I started kind of connecting the dots with, you know, what I think that he saw was a community of people claiming the name of God and Jesus who liked the the who liked the name more than the substance of Christianity they like the name of Christianity the mascot of it the the label of it more than the actual substance of it and oh and so that was profound to me because I felt like, okay, this is what we're seeing. It's kind of like playing out over again in a different way uh because what I heard, so what I heard the message of white evangelicals, how it transpired was when we first entered the church, the message was goodwill toward men. Go out and bring goodwill toward men. Glad tidings, kindness, love, compassion, generosity, grace, healing, comfort, whatever you can offer. By 2016, the overwhelming message was it's us versus them. Doesn't matter how we get it. We're gonna call them names. mean, my... I have, my sisters are Democrats. And so to hear people that I'm sitting in church with think it's okay to call people names because they have a different political belief. I just, it's like Trumpism for me tainted the whole experience. The message changed. It became divisive, bitter, hateful. And it became more about getting power for ourselves than about going out and bringing comfort and love to our neighbors. And that is what, that's why we left. Yeah, yeah, that makes so much sense. You know, it's interesting. One of the things that you do that we've actually, we've heard people come on and talk about this on the podcast before is this idea of a cult following behind Trump. And almost like there's this, that evangelicals have been put under a spell. I would love for you to talk about that a little bit more. Thinking about evangelicals as a cult following Trump, um what's going on there? Why did you make that comparison? um Yeah, help us work through that from your perspective. When I started writing the book, of course I started studying. I did some more research on Donald Trump and I read some books on him that his niece wrote and that some uh Pulitzer Prize winning reporters wrote from the Washington Post. um I could see this for myself anyway, but he has all the attributes of a cult leader. Those aren't hidden. The boastfulness, the... charisma, the use of words over and over, like certain words and phrases over and over, uh telling people which news outlets they can watch or listen to and which ones they can't. That's a huge cult thing. uh Bullying and abusing people that aren't loyalists to him. Instead of taking information in wisely, He's just not able to do that. He's too he's too arrogant. So it's all about him It's all about surrounding himself with loyalists and that this has been clear since 2015 and even before ah And so I started realizing that this is the same as if you would look to any cult leader This is how they do it. This is how this is this is this is how they operate so you look or study any cult you want to, you're going to see these same things. You're going to see probably in most cults misogyny and abuse of women too. So then I started realizing in the scriptures that there is a, when it's talking about a false leader, which now I see cult leaders as false leaders because they've been elevated into a leadership position, but not by God, because they have a self elevating spirit. That's what makes them false. That's what makes them counterfeit. So I started recognizing that they have powers of seduction. So you see this in the book of Jude, that it says when these lead, when these men come in, they are going to enchant you with uh bombastic speeches. Enchant you with bombastic speeches. Galatians 3.1 says Paul is crying out to the church at Galatia, who has bewitched you. And this is in the context of men coming in and giving them a false leader. We see this with Simon the sorcerer. We see him hiding behind God, but he's doing sorcery and magic. And then we see in the book of Revelation. there are several places in the in the Bible and I talk about these in my book where false some false leaders gain so much authority and power because they know these techniques and that's it. That's Trump. So I do believe oh and then in uh 2nd Corinthians 11 It says that uh Paul is warning them that, you know, he's worried that they are going to be led astray from their pure devotion to Christ by a false leader with a false gospel, false agenda. So like, it's all in there. And I think to myself, if Those, if all of those verses, there's more than a hundred verses in the New Testament about this stuff. If all of them weren't written for today with what we're seeing right now, I don't know why God bothered to put them in there. seriously, every single thing that the Lord warned us about pertaining to a false leader is playing out right in front of us, but some of us don't want to see it because it inconveniences our politics. You know, so far you've talked about your faith journey, how that kind of all was affected kind of with Trump coming into the political arena. But I'm curious about your political journey. Based on what you've said, I'm just going to make a broad assumption that you were probably raised conservative or something along those lines. uh Trump has ran for president the last three elections. uh So if you're a Republican, and I know this because I talk to Josh all the time because he's Republican too, you're looking at the ticket and you're like, I don't know who to vote for because I'm definitely not going to vote for the Democrat ah because I want to at least maintain somewhat of my dignity. I'm speaking as a Republican. uh So how has this experience shaped how you think about politics, partisanship, and so on? Well, I mean, I was very Republican. I voted for John McCain, voted for Mitt Romney. uh I couldn't, what? Yeah. I know it's so funny because you say that and oh, I mean, they to me are representative of what the Republican party used to be. I think Trump has contaminated it. So, ah yes, I was very, very conservative Republican. uh Let's just say I, I'm independent now. I, I can't, I can't, let me just say this. I couldn't vote for Donald Trump because I think that the type of person that he is, is actually not just politically dangerous, but I believe that he's spiritually dangerous. I believe that there are some who have made a connection with him. ah That and it has led them into spiritual captivity. I think he's an idol I think that he is There he's very spiritually dangerous. He he he does have the powers of seduction. So I'm there I can't vote for him, obviously I've had some change of heart on some issues because I think that Jesus would rather meet a person in their freedom and help walk them through certain things than to slam them over the head with a Bible. I just don't think that's the way he operates and that's what we're seeing now. It's going to backfire. Like this is not winning a harvest for Christ. This is leading people away from Christ in the name of God. I think if we allow people their freedom like Jesus does, Galatians 5.1, it is for freedom that God has set us free. Why don't we then depend on Jesus to show up where he's needed, bring the healing that's needed, bring the, if the church was doing their job, you know, being a compassionate voice to the world. Instead of slamming them over the head with the Bible, maybe we wouldn't be in this problem, but I take this personally like I I'm not I'm not scared of people and their freedoms. Let's just put it like that I'm scared of a man who comes along and puts his name on a Bible and tells people to follow him and then they lose track of Jesus Yeah, I mean, I completely understand that. probably a lot of what you're thinking and feeling, I have lot of empathy for. uh There's probably a lot of overlap, is my guess, on how we feel about the current administration and how we feel about how people have, um you know, it seems like they've taken Trump and made him um God's leader and almost, yeah, put this like messiah, messiahfication. I don't know if you, that's not a word, but I'm going to make that word. I declared a word now. think there's already a word called deification. yeah, messiahfication, deification. I'm going to manifest that word, Will, right now in this new year. I guess we're already five months in. you know, we want the divine on our side because we want power and we want control. And I don't think that... Christians, unfortunately, aren't any different. I don't know. I mean, it's a really tough thing because you want to have an effect on the world around you. You want to have an effect on the culture around you. And yet, always have to be, it seems, Christian, but always have to be careful and looking at their own heart and what's going on with their own lust for power. It's like the Bible, know, going to the Bible, it's funny because we are so, we have so much access to the Bible more than any by far, way more information than any past generation. And yet we're so biblically illiterate. And yet one of the issues that you bring up is that evangelicals have misused scripture for political control. um What do you think is going on there? Why are we doing that? And what do we need to do to get back to using the Bible in a way that's honoring God in our culture and context? Well, I uh was very involved, as you guys know, for a time with uh seven mountain mandate and these type of theologies that teach you that Christians should be at the top of every realm of society and that would include government and politics. So that was ingrained in me too and it does. makes sense in your mind the way that they teach it to you like oh that makes sense God would want his people to be at the top making the rules but the problem is when you really study the life of Jesus and actually the strategy of Jesus for reconciling people to the Father. It doesn't have anything to do with being at the top of anything. In fact, it has to do with humbling ourselves and coming alongside to serve. ah He says that's how you're going to make a difference in this world is by watching people's feet. It doesn't have anything to do with getting to the top of any sphere. of influence. And so I think that's been really over exaggerated in the in some church circles. And unfortunately, it's just picked up momentum as we've got gone along here. And so then when because it's been taught, then when Donald Trump came along, It was like, okay, well, he's willing to offer us everything, you know, we ever wanted all the political basically control that we could have what's not to like. And so then they're assessing it from that angle instead of assessing it from a spiritual angle in which Jesus was also offered all the kingdoms of the world, but he was not going to make a partnership with a bully in order to attain those. So I think part of it's just really just asking Jesus to give us his heartbeat for the world and and see what he says but I just know one thing for sure this is not his Strategy, this is not his strategy for reconciling the world to the father. All this is doing is making people oh run away from God and from church, making people distrust the church. Do you know that since my book came out and I started doing, I started the YouTube and I do video teachings on this and stuff, people tell me all the time, Thank you for telling the truth. You're making me want to open my Bible again because they can see the hypocrisy, especially some of the younger generation that's been raised in the church. They're like, we can see this hypocrisy. We don't trust our parents anymore. We're leaving the church. This is wrong. Look at what he's doing and saying about immigrants and and and these programs that he's cutting up, you know for for people that are most in need it's the exact opposite of What Jesus wants he's just hiding behind the name of God to do all of this and You know the younger people are on to him so I think if the church were to stand up and say the truth and just denounce him all together and and We could have a fresh start going forward with the gospel, but right now, how can we be trusted with the gospel, this most sacred message, when we're holding hands with a bully abuser, misogynist, criminal? How can anybody trust the message that we have? That's the problem with it. Yeah, it's so true. And I'm really glad that you brought up this community that you're finding, I do think it's super important, because we have spoken to a number of folks that have similar testimonies to yours, um some that have had similar testimonies, but then you tack on a religious cult. kind of on top of it. mean, like we've spoken to a number of folks that somehow Trump has infiltrated a church, in America. And it's just like, you've got these people looking for support groups just to kind of talk about what they're going through. And I am just super happy that folks are kind of being able to flock towards you to kind of build that kind of community. But for those that um haven't watched your videos or read your book or or any of that other kind of stuff. Like um what's one takeaway you would hope a new reader would take or get from your book? You're not alone. You're not going crazy. You are seeing things accurately. It is a cult. He is dangerous. You're not alone. There are more of us than you think that see the truth and God is bringing us together for such a time as this. Well, thank you so much, Amy, for just your time, your presence, your words, your advocacy. You know, the stuff that you're doing right now is really, really important. I don't know if I can say that enough because, you know, for me, I'm a Democrat, I'm a Christian. I'm naturally, like, doomed by most of the religious right. They look at a person like me and they're just like, you know, you're a heathen. So but for conservatives that are Christians that aren't like Trump sycophants, my heart does go out to you all because like, like that's an identity that you're trying to work through, that you've been told your whole life that has to vote, look, behave, a certain way. And now you're like, wait a minute, like, but the thing that you want me to act, behave, you know, and believe is, is being told to you by this guy. who's been divorced three times or something. So I totally get it and I'm super thankful for just everything that you've done. So kudos. Where can people buy your book? Is there a preferred place that you would want them to purchase it? Well, I mean, it's everywhere. But I know these days people are trying to shop at the local family owned stores more than on Amazon or Walmart or anything. So if you go to my website, there is a link for a small local bookstore. And they have signed copies there. So it's available that way. then, uh yeah, I'm on YouTube, amyhawk.com. Awesome. Yes. And then uh I do, I love, I kind of love how you called it a support group because that was not my intention when I put the book out, but that's something that I feel like God has kind of built as it came out. And I threw a couple of videos out there just to get it, just to let people know the book was there. Then people were drawn to those. And now that's kind of what it feels like on uh my YouTube or or even uh TikTok or Instagram. So I'm all the places and um yes, would love to see you there. I do little Bible studies pretty much every day, two or three minute Bible studies um every day pertaining to scriptures that are relevant to what's happening right now. That's really, really cool. Well, thank you again and thank you to our audience for tuning in. Make sure you like and subscribe and do all that fun stuff. yeah, thanks for stopping by. And as always, keep your conversations not right or left, but up and we'll see you next time. Take care. Bye. Bye, thank you.