Understanding the political radicalization of Charismatic Christians, with Matthew D. Taylor
Release Date: 02/17/2023
Eliza Griswold's new book Circle of Hope is a cautionary tale about placing too much hope in your church
The Long Game
Eliza Griswold's new book is about a church in Philadelphia that was started by a couple who became dramatic converts to Christianity in the 1970's. They became Jesus people. And unlike many others in that movement, they stayed pretty radical. Griswold's book tells the story of this couple's attempt to hand the church off to the next generation. It doesn't go well. I thought the book was an example of something I’ve lived, experienced and observed: placing far too much hope in what a local church can do and provide. Griswold is a contributing writing for The New Yorker and directs the...
info_outline
Major Garrett talks about Neil Postman's book "Amusing Ourselves to Death"
The Long Game
Major Garrett is chief Washington correspondent for CBS News, and as he told me in our conversation, he is an "accidental television journalist" who "never imagined" working in TV and "never wanted it." He was a print reporter for 17 years before entering the world of television. Since then, he's proven to be one of the most formidable, best prepared interviewers in journalism. This dude is rigorous, smart, and fun! And you know what? Damn it, . Major is the host of The Takeout podcast and author of five books, including The Big Truth: Upholding Democracy in the Age of the Big Lie, and...
info_outline
Moderates Keep Fighting & Don't Look for the Easy Way Out, with Aurelian Craiutu
The Long Game
Aurelian Craiutu is the author of Why Not Moderation? Letters to Young Radicals. Craiutu is the chair of Indiana University's political science department. He is reclaiming a word and idea — moderation — that is typically despised and criticized as weak and cowardly. This is a misunderstanding of what moderation is, he insists. Moderation is not for the weak or the indecisive, Craiutu says. Instead, it is a fighting creed which requires courage, strength, and savvy. It's not for everyone, he says. In other words, the implication is that some people don't have what it takes to be a...
info_outline
Yuval Levin's "American Covenant" is a blueprint for peace-making and effective governance
The Long Game
It is the 80th anniversary of D-Day. I just finished watching the ceremony in France, where they honored WWII vets who still live, and those who never came home. It was incredibly moving. But we can't just look back and grow emotional during inspiring video montages. We must think about how to avoid the paths of division that could send future young men and women to similar fates. We can honor those brave WWII vets further — now — by listening to those who are trying to help us remember how to resolve our differences peacefully, rather than through violence or force. Yuval Levin is...
info_outline
Higher ed has lost sight of mission and purpose, John Inazu says
The Long Game
John Inazu's new book is . John teaches on criminal law, law and religion and the First Amendment at Washington University in St. Louis. He is an expert on religious freedom. And he is a senior fellow with Interfaith America. He is also a former Air Force officer who was on 9/11 when a hijacked airliner hit the other side of that massive building. And finally, he is the son of Japanese-American father in an internment camp during World War II, where his American citizen grandparents were incarcerated for three years simply because of their ethnic heritage. John's book is structured...
info_outline
We Are Not Powerless: American Politics is "Entirely Fixable" says Nick Troiano in his new book "The Primary Solution"
The Long Game
We keep looking at our broken political system — the politicians who show up on our TV's and our phones, the lawmakers who end up in Congress, and the general lack of solutions to our biggest problems — and we shake our head. We promise to vote the bums out. We vow to drain the swamp. We pledge to overturn the plutocracy. But we don't think about our assembly line, the system that gives us the choices we are presented with. Remember ? "Who chooses the choices?" That's the right question. When we show up to the toy store, and don't like our choices, we're not asking who is making the...
info_outline
What is a Christian politics? Michael Wear's new book argues it's mostly about who we are
The Long Game
Break the system. That's what one New Hampshire voter, a 58-year old retired Army officer, said he wants the president to do, in . It's only the most obvious example of many of us tend to do from time to time. We pretend, or actually believe, that politics is a form of magic. In other words, we think we can elect a person, or pass a law — as if we were waving a wand — and this will fix our problems. But Michael Wear argues in The Spirit of Our Politics that a politics of magic is like trying to take a shortcut, and it won't work. "Our society, politics,...
info_outline
David Leonhardt's book joins a chorus of warnings for the Democrats
The Long Game
The 1950's and 60's were an age of widely shared prosperity in the U.S. — across class and economic lines — that have never quite returned. Things were improving for all parts of society during the post-war period, and for all groups including Black Americans, despite the real presence of racial bias and discrimination against them. And things have not improved equally in recent decades. Things have improved since then. But the rate of steady and ongoing improvement and progress has slowed in many ways,
info_outline
Tim Alberta's new book portrays a tug of war for the soul of American Christianity
The Long Game
Tim Alberta's new book: The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals In An Age of Extremism, is a sobering look at the results in history when a religious movement morphs into a political movement, and allows its identity to be taken over by political imperatives and goals.
info_outline
BUILDERS Interview: Matt Murphy on how community & music help him fight the paralysis of our times
The Long Game
I wanted to interview Matt for my Builders series because, as he says: “There's so much in the world that's challenging ... and all the hard times can have a certain degree of paralysis to them."
info_outlineThis interview is with Matthew D. Taylor, who wrote and created a recent podcast series called "Charismatic Revival Fury." Taylor is the Protestant Scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies, in Baltimore.
We know about the Proud Boys, and the Big Lie, and former President Trump's role in spreading it and deceiving millions of Americans into believing the 2020 election was stolen from them.
But there was an element in the crowd spurred on to radical anti-democratic lawlessness by something more than politics. It was "revival fury."
That's the phrase created by Taylor, who has studied a sub-culture of American evangelicalism — called the New Apostolic Reformation — and mapped its 30-year history as well as its many links to the January 6 insurrection.
Taylor's extensive historical research provides a depth of context to a shocking revelation: the Trump White House itself was in touch with key NAR leaders in the weeks after the 2020 election and leading up to the attack on the Capitol.
In fact, one key NAR leader said "government leaders" asked him to conduct a tour of churches after the 2020 election to energize and mobilize Trump supporters to support the effort to overturn the election results. This NAR leader, Dutch Sheets, had already been part of a Trump White House outreach effort in 2019 led by Trump faith adviser Paula White Cain.
The Sheets tour turned into a whirlwind tour of seven swing states over a month's time, in which roughly two-dozen self-proclaimed prophets whipped large crowds into a frenzy of religious fervor mixed with apocalyptic and violent imagery of defeating demonic forces, which were attributed to Democrats and President Biden.
He calls it "charismatic revival fury" and has produced a podcast series by that name. Many of these NAR followers believed that if Trump were reinstated it would spark a religious revival leading to the conversion of a billion people to not just Christianity, but their brand of the faith.
Taylor draws a distinction between personal "spiritual warfare" — a fairly standard belief held by many Christians in America and around the world — and the kind of hyper-radicalized version of "strategic spiritual warfare" promoted by NAR that risks pushing its adherents into the kind of violence we saw on January 6.
Taylor also cautions that political figures on the right are playing with rhetoric that risks further radicalizing religious supporters, and that these remarks fall on a spectrum. On the most extreme, you have former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn literally calling former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a "demon."
But other Republicans are also toying with such ideas. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has quoted a passage from the Bible where he replaces "the devil" with "the left." And former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley this week said that debates over how to teach children in schools about gender "is absolutely spiritual warfare."
Taylor's research shows that talking about these topics requires a deftness and precision that avoids painting all conservative Christians with such a broad brush that it risks pushing them closer to extremist radicals, rather than bringing them into a broader conversation that can serve as a moderating force.
"We need to be able to see the diversity within these movements, not paint with such a broad brush that says anyone who holds some theological idea or participates in some theological meme is therefore an extremist," Taylor told Yahoo News. "I think we really need to focus on people who actually behave in extreme ways and say extreme things."
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.