The Christian Right's "Wild Faith" (w/ Talia Lavin)
Added 2024-10-18 10:30:01 +0000 UTCIn this episode, Matt is joined by journalist Talia Lavin to discuss her new book, Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America, one of the most fascinating and unique books published on the Christian right during the Trump-era. Lavin takes her subjects seriously, but not uncritically, and especially focuses on the wrecked and ruined lives left in the wake of conservative evangelicalism's more conspiratorial and authoritarian elements, from the Satanic Panic to James Dobson's parenting manual on how to beat a "strong-willed child" into compliance. Along the way, they talk about the triumph of QAnon, End Times theology, the importance of the New Apostolic Reformation, and more—all with an eye toward how these religious views and practices help explain conservative evangelicals' overwhelming support for Donald Trump.
Sources:
Talia Lavin, Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America (2024)
— Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy (2020)
— "The Sword and the Sandwich"
Listen again:
"The Prayers and Prophecies of Pat Robertson," Know Your Enemy, July 17, 2023
Comments
It was heart breaking to hear Matt minimize being spanked with a spoon. I do *not* mean this as a criticism of Matt's parents or to dimiss his point about his mom's genuine kindness. Instead just how normalized violence in our early lives is.
Jonathan Dudley
2025-02-13 14:57:22 +0000 UTCTalia talks about the German parenting style of early 1900s. The 2009 beautiful film "The White Ribbon" touches on some of those points, taking place in 1913. Highly recommend, if you haven't seen it. I know after watching it, I did feel the connection of cultural acceptance of extreme hierarchy and brutality of child rearing to the acceptance of authoritarianism on a larger scale.
Sam Murphy
2024-12-30 20:23:44 +0000 UTCThere's a connection between this conversation and Corey Robin's observations in The Enigma of Clarence Thomas: that the correct society must construct and maintain an abyss into which any straggler might fall, at any moment, and who is protected from same only by the strong coercive presence of a guiding male figure, teaching how to live "correctly." Ghastly.
Bill Sallak
2024-10-29 03:19:51 +0000 UTCMatt, thanks for a great episode. I've been privately wondering if ideas about childrearing are tacitly part of the right's movement to change higher education. It would be consistent....
David Gillman
2024-10-24 23:51:44 +0000 UTCAs someone who did not grow up in evangelical circles, I learned a lot from this series about Bill Gothard and the IBP, which explicitly aimed to train IBP children for politics. A documentary description of what Lavin describes: https://www.amazon.com/Shiny-Happy-People-Duggar-Secrets/dp/B0B8TR2QV5?dplnkId=c72d5558-b97c-4065-836f-33447c812977&nodl=1.
M. Therese Lysaught
2024-10-24 00:51:15 +0000 UTCSpeaking of data: the NYT just came out with a report that, since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the abortion rate has gone UP in states that outlawed abortion. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/22/upshot/abortions-rising-state-bans.html
JimJim5122
2024-10-23 22:04:50 +0000 UTCSpeaking of theology and politics and demonology, earlier today I read this bit from the left: “[T]he president [is] a victim and captive of the principalities and powers. (The Pentagon Papers document and detail the process by which presidents and other officials are victimized by demonic powers.) In fact, the captive status of the person occupying the office has by now reached such proportions that the presidency has become a pseudo-monarchy functioning as an elaborate facade for an incipient technocratic totalitarianism. […] If the nation, and its reputed leaders, be sorely beset so specifically by the demonic, what befits the Christian witness? [I]n the Word of God, expose death and all death’s works and wiles, rebuke lies, cast out demons, exorcise, cleanse the possessed, raise those who are dead in mind and conscience.” (Stringfellow, An Ethic For Christians And Other Aliens In a Strange Land, 1973, p. 42-3)
JimJim5122
2024-10-23 21:56:54 +0000 UTCSergius Bulgakov, the great 20th century Russian Orthodox theologian, wrote a perspicacious essay on the difference between what he calls "eschatologism" as "historical program" and healthy eschatological faith lived as a "personal mood of the soul." He says this of those possessed by eschatologism as historical program: "[this historical program] is...not even implemented in oneself but time and again imposed instead of the bodies of others." Indeed. Bulgakov, "The Foundational Antinomy of the Christian Philosophy of History. "
Roberto
2024-10-23 16:25:23 +0000 UTCI think you're exactly right about the central place of severe consequences in a right-wing worldview, both as a supposed deterrent *and* as a supposedly fair and deserved punishment for those who can't be deterred. And while I don't have any answers either, you perfectly summed up my frustration with "here's what data shows *really* works" as the sole response to right-wing calls for severe consequences, because it largely fails (or refuses) to address the elephant in the room: what "works" depends on values, not just data, because your values determine what outcomes you want (or at least are willing to live with), and beliefs like "harm reduction is just coddling, addicts should go cold turkey or accept the consequences" is a statement of values, not just some misunderstanding of what the data shows.
Peter Aidan Byrne
2024-10-22 20:36:58 +0000 UTCWonderful conversation. It actually “hit home’ in light of my devoutly religious father constructing a cat and 9 tale whip to get me into correct obedience. An object lesson for my brothers and sisters that 60 years later still hurts. And another perspective on fundamentalist church life is in Jim Ault’s 2005 book Spirit and Flesh. Have either of you read this qualitative, participant observation of a Massachusetts baptist church? I’d appreciate your thoughts as it contains some other features of this life (especially community) that is worth considering.although in this current political climate it may be lost in all the noise.
Jim Potterton
2024-10-21 23:56:12 +0000 UTCYou know, D.L. and I "knew each other on Twitter" in the pre-Elon era, and more broadly had some overlapping connections in religious journalism spaces, but I think I'd forgotten about this particular project of theirs. Thank you for the reminder! (Matt)
Know Your Enemy
2024-10-21 23:49:21 +0000 UTCAny thoughts on The Apprentice (2024)? A depiction of the early years of the Right’s most important 21st century figure sounds right up both of your alleys!
Michael Warren
2024-10-21 08:42:03 +0000 UTCListening to this episode after my therapy appointment in which we discussed the fallout of my constant rapture anxiety as a southern Baptist kid was a RIDE. Also loved the IJM callout (my best friend was campus president in college). Loved this episode!
Addison
2024-10-20 19:58:46 +0000 UTCMatt, do you know about Krispin and D. L. Mayfield’s “Strongwilled” project? It’s a deep dive into “religious authoritarian parenting” by survivors of the same. https://open.substack.com/pub/strongwilled?r=34rcs&utm_medium=ios
Charlie Collier
2024-10-20 11:36:42 +0000 UTCWhere it belongs (Matt)
Know Your Enemy
2024-10-20 02:12:55 +0000 UTCI was 43 years old, helping my Mormon parents clean their garage, when I ran across that goddamned Dobson book. Right into the recycling bin it went.
Jeffrey Otter
2024-10-19 08:39:59 +0000 UTCIf the world becomes a less dangerous, more forgiving place, the fundamentalist worldview crashes. If consequences and punishments aren't severe, human nature isn't chastened into obedience and humility. See: the threat posed by trans joy, the better dead than gay thinking, the sepsis in the parking lot. To get authoritarian punishers into office, they'll cling ever tighter to conspiracies that reject reality (like crime is down, or more cops don't reduce crime) not just because it clashes with their worldview, but because it must not be true if they are ever to get the political community they want.
James Talley
2024-10-18 23:12:37 +0000 UTCI remember reading a couple of profiles of people who went down the QAnon rabbit hole and in my memory the second or third paragraph would always note their upbringing in a fundamentalist or Mormon household—I still don't want to draw inferences from that too heavily as it does indeed sound like the 2000s called, but it was interesting to hear the same connection made here. Re: the surprising ideological bedfellows in the original Satanic Panic: it does seem noteworthy that some of that theory's (utterly baffling) rehabilitation in online spaces has come not from the right but from a kind of lefty parapolitics world, similar to how the term "groomer" (again, in my admittedly partial recollection) was being used in tumblr-adjacent contexts before it made the leap to the right. I'm in the middle of the section of Richard Beck's new book on 9/11 about Abu Ghraib and torture and your comments on the perpetuation of violence in the family really resonated with that. I wish there had been a little more elaboration on Talia's observation that moral panics are cyclical. In trying to answer the question of why and when they recur, I think that dual focus on both wider political forces and family dynamics is very compelling.
Nik
2024-10-18 19:16:21 +0000 UTCThis is so gorgeous & thoughtful & of course utterly awful ( thinking of the oldest, dearest friends in my life who continue to live out these — in our case super retro Calvinist— values and practices). I’m working on an analysis of the tv series The Leftovers right now, and this conversation is so helpful for tuning into the stakes of invocations of “the Rapture,” including secular versions and portrayal. Thank you !
Ada Jaarsma
2024-10-18 18:57:03 +0000 UTCThe New Apostolic Reformation reminds me of my own upbringing in Mormonism, which also claims living prophets and apostles. This is interesting to me, because I’ve long wondered if Utah would ever have a competitor in the “living religion” space, one that is even more forthright with their right-wing politics.
Derek Hart
2024-10-18 17:52:55 +0000 UTCThat sounds excellent thank you
David
2024-10-18 17:30:21 +0000 UTCGreat work, thanks… new subscriber to Lavin btw
Mark Hulsether
2024-10-18 17:23:09 +0000 UTCIf you want more insight into the consequences of that premillenial “the world is about to end” thinking, the You Have Permission podcast has several series on those subject
Lauren Bickel
2024-10-18 17:00:39 +0000 UTCY’all should thank Talia for this new subscriber. I’d been torn about adding yet another subscription to my collection but I simply had to listen to this interview. Talia is one of the few outsiders to the Christian right who actually takes that worldview seriously and has insightful things to say about it. This exvangelical appreciates Talia and this conversation.
Lauren Bickel
2024-10-18 16:54:44 +0000 UTCThis was an utterly fantastic episode, more than convinced me to check this book out. And, a credit to Lavin's focus on "those harmed" I think I come away from this decided more able not just to sympathize with the people harmed but to get the appeal of evangelical Christianity in a way I don't think I did prior. A question for Matt on the anecdote about (not) paying off your car—were there any other examples you recall of "the end of the world means we don't need to worry about debt" type thinking in your life, or for that matter any broader thoughts on that notion? I've been reading a (very) little bit about Christian apocalypticism (Jacob Taubes mostly), and some about the history of banking/finance/credit, and from some reading and your story I find myself thinking about for all the anxiety the end of the world would bring, it can/should/will (if you are of the elect) offer a reprieve from some other, more material, causes of anxiety. For that matter, to share my own experience of this, now that I think about it I've definitely laughed off some opportunities to sensibly plan for my own future because between climate change and our present economic circumstances (with perhaps a bit of dourness borne out of graduating college 6 months before the pandemic started) it seems at times perfectly reasonable to giggle anxiously over how the end of the world is going to be here so soon that there's no need to worry about my life 5 years from now, let alone 50, so why not simply not waste time caring about such futures.
David
2024-10-18 16:23:02 +0000 UTCI think part of the “internally coherent” logic of the right is the myth that high consequences deter bad behavior. They actually want to make sex riskier (no abortion, no sex ed), prisons more dangerous (underfunded, longer sentencing), unemployment worse (weaker safety net), so that people don’t have sex, don’t commit crimes and don’t refuse to work shitty jobs. And, hell should remain as scary and real and imminent as possible to discourage sin. So, physical violence to correct juvenile unruliness fits in as another deterrent. To me, the left/liberal response often feels like (for one example) showing more and more research on how needle exchanges and medically supervised injection sites are better for addicts (than the consequences of poverty, illness, death). But that isn’t convincing to conservatives when the whole worldview relies on ‘bad things ~should~ happen to you when you do wrong’. In that line of thinking, the “good” people wisely know right from wrong — or at least refrain due to the consequence. And the “bad” people probably deserve how terrible the punishment is anyways. Not sure how to more effectively counter this, but for what it’s worth, I really like Matt’s previous comments on the podcast about reframing original sin as a reason we need to get more support from society.
Tommy Sullivan
2024-10-18 15:53:16 +0000 UTCGod, it is so validating to hear this kind of content. Grew up in one of these pentacostal families that held (and still does hold) all these beliefs. Grandmother truly believes she's witnessing the end times and the rapture is coming any day.
Weston Awtry
2024-10-18 15:50:08 +0000 UTCimmanentizing the eschaton since the 70s
desdinova
2024-10-18 12:30:22 +0000 UTCIt is infuriating to encounter "Christian" excuse -- encouragement! -- of child abuse, and so one is angered regularly.
Adam Lewis
2024-10-18 11:25:55 +0000 UTCFIRST
Sam
2024-10-18 11:11:25 +0000 UTC
