Election 2024: No Mandate for Extremism

In the wake of a deeply consequential election, The State of Belief this week unpacks the electoral role played by religious communities, exploring how various faith groups influenced voter turnout and political coalitions.

Guests Skye Perryman, Katherine Stewart, Adelle Banks and Bob Smietana join host Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush to share critical insights into the diverse religious communities shaping our democracy. Their dedication to engaging in nuanced reporting and analysis, and fostering partnerships within and beyond faith traditions, reflects a commitment to upholding a vibrant and inclusive democracy. Their insights explore how we can value and uplift a wide range of voices in the face of intense polarization, Christian nationalism and extremism.

Skye Perryman stresses the critical need to safeguard religious freedoms. "I think there's a huge role for people who have spiritual and moral commitments, including religious commitments, in this fight for democracy. And I know that there's a lot of attention to the corrosive role of religious philosophies…whether that's Christian Nationalism or religious fundamentalism." Katherine Stewart points out that "Christian nationalism is sort of a reactionary nationalism. It's about who gets to properly belong in the country and who doesn't. So it's fusing a kind of religious identity with a partisan political identity, that you're either in or you're out. You're with us or you're not.”

Bob Smietana reflects on broader political shifts over the past few elections, stating, "In the last eight years, the last three elections, there's been a lot of focus on White evangelicals who are very strong supporters of Donald Trump... but some of this is that White Christians in general, for whatever reasons, have leaned toward Donald Trump." Adelle Banks looks at the fight ahead and recalls a conversation with a Black minister preparing his Sunday sermon, saying, "He's going to be addressing grief, and talking about the need to have kind of a prophetic grief... as opposed to a pathetic grief... people should be trying to be resilient and moving forward, thinking of examples in the past where African-Americans have made it through difficult times."

Skye L. Perryman is President and CEO of Democracy Forward, a nonpartisan, national legal organization that promotes democracy and progress through litigation, regulatory engagement, policy education, and research. She has built a visionary team of legal, policy, and communications experts to confront anti-democratic extremism head-on while also using the law to advance progress and a bold vision for the future. Skye is a Board Member of Interfaith Alliance.

Katherine Stewart writes about the intersection of faith and politics, policy, education, and the threat to democratic institutions. Her latest book, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, was awarded first place for Excellence in Nonfiction Books by the Religion News Association and a Morris D. Forkosch award. Her new book Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy comes out early 2025.

Adelle M. Banks is the projects editor and a national reporter for Religion News Service, covering topics including religion and race, the faith of African Americans and partnerships between government and religious groups. She co-authored Becoming a Future-Ready Church: 8 Shifts to Encourage and Empower the Next Generation of Leaders.

Bob Smietana is a national reporter for RNS based near Chicago, covering evangelicals, weird religion and the changing religious landscape. He is the author of Reorganized Religion: The Reshaping of the American Church and Why it Matters.

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REV. PAUL BRANDEIS RAUSHENBUSH, HOST:

Skye Perryman is president and CEO of Democracy Forward, a nonprofit that uses the law to build collective power and advance a bold, vibrant democracy for all people. She's at the center of many of the democracy preservation efforts happening now. She is also a valued member of the Interfaith Alliance board, and really, a national treasure.

Skye Perryman, welcome back to the State of Belief.

SKYE PERRYMAN, GUEST:

It is good to see you on a day like this. Thank you for having me.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

 You know, this is a this is a kind of a critical moment. I mean, we were we were preparing for all outcomes of the election, but this is this is a really, it's one that involves a lot of risks for American democracy. And I'm just curious, like how you're feeling with both your personal hat on and then definitely want to get into with your professional hat on. But let's start with the personal how are you feeling about in this moment.

SKYE PERRYMAN:

Well, you know, like you, Paul, I'm a parent. And so when I don't have my day job hat on, I have my other job hat on. And this has been a really hard week to explain to my now-nine-year-old, who woke up and really couldn't understand. We don't really talk about some of the more offensive things that were said over the course of the campaign, but he had heard through some of his friends about the Madison Square Garden episode, and what the president-elect said about people. And, you know, he is raised by parents and in a household and in a spiritual community that doesn't speak about people, any people, that way. And so I think that that was a hard conversation to have.

And so if you've got any advice about how to really navigate this with kids, I'm all ears. But I think that's really, on the personal front, has been what has been occupying us this week.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

I just want to echo that because, you know, we Walter has been really closely following this election very, very closely and oh, very good.

SKYE PERRYMAN:

I saw him this summer, your son, and he was asking. He was very up to speed.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Already, already in the summer. And it's just only intensified. And so there's, you know, there's been some tears and some sense of like, what does this mean? And, and we, you know, we do our best to offer a protective message to them and really say, you know, we're all here together and you know, we're going to we're going to protect one another. But it is, you know, it's heartbreaking and it does make it very real.

And so the work that we're doing and the work that we share does feel it's incredibly important to the nation. But part of the reason it's important to the nation is because it goes down to the personal level and to the everyday people and how they're understanding this moment. And so let me ask you to switch caps and, and put on your democracy forward cap and, and tell us how you're, you know, what are some of the observations you're already seeing from what's coming out of the Trump Vance elect camp?

SKYE PERRYMAN:

Well, first of all, I want to say something that came out of the the vice president's camp, which is that she suffered a - and we all, those of us that were hoping this would go a different way, I think, suffered disappointment - but it was beautiful to hear her say, with reverence to our Constitution and to our democracy, that elections happen and only one person wins. And when that happens, we don't claim that there's voter fraud that's never existed. We don't claim that the results were rigged. And by the way, there's no claim from the Trump Vance camp this time that the votes were rigged.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Isn’t that interesting?

SKYE PERRYMAN:

It’s very interesting. But that we do what we are supposed to do as people that have inherited one of the greatest, what she'll call, one of the greatest experiments in the world, which is American democracy. And so I just want to say that to start.

And then I think as we look, it's really important to contextualize what happened. And I'm not a political pundit and I don't have a lot of insight there, and I'm sure there'll be a lot of the kind of political and chattering class that will be talking about this for some time. But what I saw is, I saw states like Missouri, deep red states, I saw states like Florida, I saw the majority of people in those states vote for values like the right to reproductive health care when it was on the ballot. Now in Florida, it didn't pass because there's a 60% threshold. But that's a democracy problem. That's not a sort of where the people are problem. And we also saw voters reject vouchers and affirm public education. And we saw voters affirm fair wages when those issues were on the ballot.

And so I think when we look at this election and when we look at what we know, there were a lot of controversies over polls throughout the election - by the way, a lot of those polls seem to be just right. They always said there would probably be somebody that would take a lead in a lot of the states, but in general would be a pretty close, within that margin of error. We saw that across the board, but there was a lot of controversy around polls involving candidates.

There was not around polls involving sort of extreme proposals and things like Project 2025. The vast majority of people, whether you're conservative, whether you're independent, or whether you're liberal, rejected that kind of extremism. It forced President-elect Trump and Vance to say on the campaign trail, to try to disavow some of these policies. I think we all don't think that's particularly credible, but there was such opposition.

And I think that that's what we have to focus on, is that what we saw in this election is not a mandate for restrictions on reproductive health care access even in the reddest states. We did not see a mandate for Project 2025, because the candidate that won sort of came out and said he had nothing to do with it.

What we did see was that President-elect Trump won by some pretty significant margins in some of the key states. And so that's how the election went, and the vice president has conceded that. But I think that as we look to the future, we need to be focused on people and what they want and what they expect and what they are entitled to in this democracy. And that is going to be the work.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

It's really helpful to remember, actually, the policies of project 2025, which are kind of we're behind. And they kept on saying, no, no, no, I don't know anything about that. And there was some you know, there was so much like, like, you know, kind of moving this way and that. And, you know, president elect Trump would be like, oh yeah, no, I'm against a I'm against abortion bans. I mean, you know, and then the next one, he was just going back and forth.

Now it's going to rubber is going to hit the road and people are going to realize, oh, that's really where they stand. And in some ways reminding people of how they they're actually enacting things they said they wouldn't do in the coming months is going to be really important years. you also have a, you know, a legal strategy, kind of at every step of the way. I mean, we are already having to really think about, mass deportation. I mean, we're really having to think of real things happening that are about to go down. And what, you know, there's there's the spiritual and moral thing, but what are the what is that legal options in front of us? And how are you imagining this next period of time and with your own organization and your own work?

SKYE PERRYMAN:

Well, you know, we were really built for this. Democracy Forward was founded – we’re a legal organization, for your listeners that aren't familiar. And we were founded in the wake of the 2016 election, when in the early days of the Trump administration we started seeing that the United States was actually in a new era of American life.

I had hoped it was a short-lived era, and it's not. And that happens through history, where we go through these periods. But we are in a new era of American life, where the project of democracy is not just about sort of trying to achieve that true, inclusive democracy that the country has aspired to, but not achieved; but right now is about having to hold on to hard-earned gains, to the rights and privileges that Americans have come to enjoy that are really under attack.

And so in the prior administration, I think it's important that your listeners know this, the Trump administration did a range of things that harmed people and communities, and some of those could not be stopped. And a lot of people are going to probably get hurt, because some of them could not be stopped, but a lot of them were. And they were stopped because legal advocates, with the courage of their communities and people - whether it was veterans, doctors, teachers, journalists, faith leaders - said that not on our watch are we going to violate the rights of people that everyone in this country is entitled to. And we went to court, and a range of organizations went to court.

I was trying to look back at the numbers. I believe that the Trump administration lost in court around 80% of the time, in the last administration, because of their lawlessness. And there is a bold and robust legal community that is prepared to do that again. Now, we can talk about what that means in 2024 and 2025, where the courts are different than they were - the Supreme Court certainly is different than it was. But we are fully prepared to use all the tools that our legal processes provide, that our democracy provides, to ensure that people's rights are protected - especially those communities that are being unnecessarily targeted, like what we saw at Madison Square Garden, what we saw in some of these paid ads, and that's going to be the work.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

You're a valued board member of Interfaith Alliance. You're also a person of faith yourself. And and I know these things. You're, you know, have integrity for you. They're all part of it, you know, of a whole. How do you understand the role of religion in our democracy in this moment and and especially in relationship to the law. It seems like some things are shifting. How we understand the role of religion in America. And. And I'm just curious, how you're imagining a path forward with religion and the law and and how it's being exercised, because as you and I have talked and people on this program have heard me say many times, like one of my, you know, I find most egregious is when religion is used as an excuse for discrimination. And and we're seeing that a lot, you know, I mean, the, you know, you can kind of do anything under the religious freedom. Guys, I'm, I'm curious how that all pans out for you, as you understand, like the the months and even years ahead as far as legal strategy and religion.

SKYE PERRYMAN:

Well, let me first of all say, I think there's a huge role for people who have spiritual and moral commitments, including religious commitments, in this fight for democracy. And I know that there's a lot of attention, and there probably needs to be more attention, to the corrosive role that very narrowly rigid and sort of more exclusive religious philosophies or points of view are having - whether that's Christian Nationalism or religious fundamentalism or hardline behavior.

But this country was built out of people of deep spiritual and moral beliefs, believing in a better way and working for that way. That is what the abolitionist movement was. That is what the civil rights movement was. The women's rights, the marriage equality movement, the Progressive ERA, of course. All had people that had very deep spiritual and moral commitments, really working for that better society.

So I just want to say to your listeners, who I know our community here is very diverse, religious and spiritual and moral backgrounds. People of no religious tradition but of deep commitment. We're going to need people in this time to stand up, and that the majority of people in this country, the majority of Christians in this country, do not ascribe to the extremism that we see in things like Project 2025 and things like the Dobbs Court's decision to overturn abortion access. And it's going to be important that people make their courage known.

Now, in terms of the law and religious structures, there has been a movement in the law to undermine a variety of our core protections for people and communities. And that includes our First Amendment's protection of the separation of Church and State. And so the same groups that have been behind cases like the Dobbs case, and you featured that on this on this program when it came out, have also had a religious view that is not sufficiently protective of separation of Church and State. And so we're now in a position where, at the federal level, some of those protections have eroded.

But what we know is that we are not left without power. The legal landscape may shift. it does shift, but there are lawyers and advocates that can come up with the next strategies of how we use the tools that our legal process is providing now for the betterment of people and communities. And so we're going to be looking to Interfaith Alliance, and we're going to be looking to a lot of groups that are out there, to sort of help co-create with us the ways that we can ensure that our nation's best principles, our Constitution, the way that is being interpreted, can be used for democracy and for people in communities in this time.

So we'll watch that, and then, of course, watch our state levels, because, there's a lot of rights at the state level, and a lot of lawyers have done great work, to help fortify those rights in certain states across the country. And we've got a lot of work to do to continue to build that robust pipeline.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

That is the inspiring work. And I encourage everyone to go to Democracy Forward, the website, because there's lots of resources there.

SKYE PERRYMAN:

We won’t spam you. And we do try to provide a lot of tools, including making sure people know how they can engage with organizations like Interfaith Alliance, as well.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Yeah. And it's not you don't have to be a lawyer to be interested in democracy, forward work. I mean, it's really so, yeah, I want to take like personal privilege. And, you know, we've talked a lot about Brandeis and, you know, the family. And, you know, one of the things that gives me comfort in these, like, very difficult times and adverse times is, you know, what Brandeis and sometimes was most famous for was being kind of the people's attorney when there was, you know, he was like, you know, there's a lot of corporate attorneys out there.

We're going to be the people's I want to be. The more lawyers should be the people's attorney. And so he got that kind of that, that name. He didn't call himself that. But some people used that to talk about him. And then we was on the court. A lot of his time on the court was just writing dissents that eventually became the law of the land. And so I just think it's important to recognize that there have been really adverse times, you know, both socially but then also legally, where some of the groundwork was actually possibly being laid for a future, that could incorporate, you know, a welcome of more people and more legal standing for more people. I'm just any thoughts about this moment for the legal profession and how it can be part of, like building a democracy for the future?

SKYE PERRYMAN:

I do think we need to follow Justice Brandeis - by the way, for your listeners who may not know this, Justice Brandeis was the first Jewish justice. So there's a real interfaith message in that, too. But I do think we can follow in his footsteps at this time. that's what we try to do at Democracy Forward, where we represent people and communities. But, this is what I'll say: We have long said to people that will follow our work - and again, you don't have to be a lawyer to follow our work, and we get a lot of our best insights from people that aren't lawyers. But we've long said that the courts, right now, in this moment, are a front line in the battle for our democracy, and an important backstop against extremism.

What does that mean? They're a front line, because as a result of a multi-decade, highly coordinated effort to roll back civil rights protections through the courts, civil rights protections that found a lot of their precedent in those dissents and in the work of Brandeis and others from way earlier in the in the 20th century, there has been a concerted legal effort that is seeking to do things through the courts that they cannot do in the public square.

So they can't ban abortion, even in Missouri. The Missourians want to protect it. So they're going to have to try to do that through the courts. So in that way, our courts are a front line, and we need everybody on that front line. And we represent so many groups on briefs and in the courts, and you do a lot of work to educate people about what's going to the courts. It's the front line of the battle for our country, not just for lawyers.

But the courts also are an important backstop. They continue to be a last resort where we have to go when people that are entrusted with the public trust abuse that trust - and we will do that. We do that now. We do that against state and local actors that are seeking to ban books and criminalize librarians and ban healthcare. And we will do that against any powerful figure at the federal level that is not abiding by the rule of law and respecting the rights of the American people. And so we're really asking people to hold two things right now, which is that there is an extreme conservative movement that has been moving through our federal courts in some ways, that is responsible for the overturning of things like Roe vs. Wade.

And those institutions also exist in a democracy in order to protect our democratic institutions and to protect people that are getting left out. And we're going to have to use them. And we're going to go to court and we're going to really push for the courts to represent the people. We win in court a lot more than people expect that we would. We went in front of judges that were appointed by President Trump, that were appointed by conservative presidents. We went in front of judges that were appointed by more moderate and liberal presidents, and we're going to continue to do that.

So we're just asking for people to really focus on this as one tool among many that we have. And of course, the main tool is going to be We the People and holding our lawmakers to account. You said you had nothing to do with Project 2025. You said you wouldn't ban abortion. Okay, let's see that. We'll all celebrate that for you. We will celebrate that, if that actually comes about.

And when it doesn't, you will hear from the voice of the American people, who have made clear on these issues that there is no mandate for this extremism. And that's what we have to make sure that we remember. There may be a mandate or perceived mandate right now around, you know, a personality-driven situation. I can't get into that, about who likes who or who wants to go, who thinks who's funnier at the dais or whatever people bought into in this election. But what we know is that on the issues, there's not a mandate. And that's going to be the work of democracy, is really holding our people in power to that account.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Skye Perryman is president and CEO of Democracy Forward, using the law to build collective power and advance a bold, vibrant democracy for all people. That sounds pretty good right now. Skye, thank you so much for coming on the state of belief. We really appreciate you.

SKYE PERRYMAN:

Thank you.

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REV. PAUL BRANDEIS RAUSHENBUSH, HOST:

Katherine Stuart is one of the most important chroniclers of the influence of religious nationalism on our democracy, and the author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism that came out in 2020. She has a new book that will be coming out in early 2025 called Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy. Katherine, thank you so much for joining us. it feels like a the right time to start talking about money, lies, and God. Can I just get your initial reaction when you saw the returns come in from the exercise in American democracy that happened this week, what were some of your initial thoughts, given your framework of your work?

KATHERINE STEWART, GUEST:

Right. You know, I've written three books about the movement that brought Donald Trump to power. And my forthcoming book, Money, Lies and God, is really a dissection of that movement, of all the different pieces of the infrastructure, all of the different sort of intellectual forces that have collaborated and bring this movement about, how it works.

So frankly, I wasn't that surprised. It's not like I didn't see it coming. But I think many people, frankly, have not paid enough attention to that movement. They haven't paid enough attention to the money invested in it. They're not particularly aware of the misinformation bubble that it's funded, and they're not really aware of many of the faith-based initiatives that collaborate to form a kind of giant voter turnout machine.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Yeah. I mean, I think that's like you, you you had a lens that 99.9% of American population don't. There are a few who are actually running these machines that know exactly what's going to happen. And, and but for many of us, we're looking around and I you'll appreciate this. One of the most common questions I get. Oh, how can evangelicals be voting for this guy? I mean, I mean, you know, there's a kind of like what? You know, and you're like, no, no, no, you don't understand. This is like it's because of all of that, you know, and, and and I think you're connecting dots for people that are so important.

It's so important for you to do that. I mean, let's get into it because, I mean, part of this is like we're recognizing a failure to understand and a failure to counteract. I mean, and I speak as one of those people who's really trying to counteract where are we missing? Like, what what what are we missing that feels so important for everyone who's listening to this podcast today or this radio show today. what are we missing?

KATHERINE STEWART:

Well, there's so much. I mean, first of all, one of the issues with much of the mainstream media is they don't often go to the places where this movement is actually happening. One of those places are the local churches that are part of larger church networks or parachurch networks. So prior to the election, we got a lot of stories about the Democratic Party's ground operations, which, you know, we heard over and over again, that are better funded than the Republican Party's ground operations. They're doing going out there, you know, strangers knocking on doors and making phone calls and sending postcards.

Well, the Christian Nationalist voter turnout machine is much, much more robust, much better funded - even though it doesn't count within the official RNC money that is devoted to voter turnout. And frankly, it brings in huge numbers of extremely reliable voters to the Republican side.

It also reaches a lot of low propensity voters, people who might sit the election out, who don't feel like they have a stake in elections. And what will happen is, part of these very large networking organizations that bring pastors together, they will literally go into these churches or do presentations for large numbers of pastors of these sort of smaller churches. And they'll do presentations getting people ideologically on the right page, and then giving them really explicit tools for voter turnout, registering people to vote. They don't talk down to anybody; they say, Well, if you don't know how to register to vote, this is exactly how you do it. And this is exactly how to make sure your vote gets counted. I think it was Tony Perkins at the last Pray Vote Stand Conference I went to just about a month ago, he said, We're doing ballot harvesting in churches. So that Christian Nationalist voter turnout machine is is really effective.

And by the way, getting messages about who to vote for from your faith leader, who you trust already, is much more effective at turning out your vote than having some stranger knock on your door. But you wouldn't even know about those faith-based get-out-the-vote operations if you watched much of the mainstream media.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH

Well, and also there's like this idea, oh, they can't be doing that because that's illegal. You know, they've long since like, you know, forgotten and forget that, you know, I mean, that's not even a thing anymore for the Christian. Right? I mean, they're just like, we don't believe in that and we're not going to obey it and come for us. Try it.

KATHERINE STEWART:

It's really true. You know, at the last Pray Vote Stand Conference, I heard from Matt Krauss. He's with First Liberty Institute. They're one of the leading right wing legal advocacy groups, alongside Alliance Defending Freedom and some others. And he was talking about these voter mobilization operations. And there was a woman in the audience who raised her hand. She said, I'm confused. Have they repealed the Johnson Amendment? Which, as you know, is the amendment that's supposed to keep faith-based organizations from endorsing any particular political party. And his response was something along the lines, if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, did it make a sound? And everybody laughed. I mean.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

This goes straight to I mean, this is not actually, I'm sure, what you meant in the title, but the lies part of it, you know, I mean, like, we're, you know, we're just like, you know, if whatever.

I also think that they're just brazenly don't are not don't believe in it. Would love for that to go to the Supreme Court. You know, I mean, of course, you know and I do want to get into the money part because I do think, like people underestimate how much investment is going into these efforts. Can you talk a little bit about that?

KATHERINE STEWART:

Yes, absolutely. I think it's really important to understand the role of the super-wealthy right wing funders of this movement, because they are increasingly driving the process. And by the way, their motivations are not necessarily religious in general, even though some of them are. A lot of them are frankly committed to essentially libertarian economic policies. And this group includes people like Jeff Yass and Barre Seid and others who are not Christian, by the way, or Seid, who is Jewish.

But then, of course, there are others like Tim Dunn and the Wilks brothers, who are these energy billionaires who profess Christian Nationalist views, but at the same time, they're big believers in Big Oil and in maximizing fossil fuel consumption. And they really do want to replace democracy with their kind of authoritarianism.

So it's a kind of very diverse group of funders. Some of them are ultra-conservative Catholics, some of them Protestant, others sort of evangelical; some of them not religious at all or Jewish. But this kind of big money will always seek to preserve itself. And one way or another, it will do so by subverting democracy.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

What kind of money are we actually talking about? I know you don't have a calculator in front of you, but literally it's not just millions of dollars like, no, no.

KATHERINE STEWART:

Oh my gosh. No. I mean, Barre Seid, for instance, donated $1.6 billion to form a trust called the Marble Freedom Trust, which is dedicated to promoting right wing politics. He put Leonard Leo in charge of it. Leonard Leo, as you know, was a former head of the Federalist Society, and is known as a moneyman of the religious right.

He's played an enormous role in shaping the courts and funding candidates for the courts - you know, people with a correct ideological approach. And he's got his finger in the pot, and a whole host of other right wing and religious and Christian Nationalist organizations. So $1.6 billion - frankly, a lot of money buys a lot of political influence. It means you can spend some $230 million every year without even touching the nut. And that's only one.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

And that's just one donation. I mean, you know, if you start to think so many, if you start to really compile, this is, you know, and and, you know, Interfaith Alliance, we consider ourselves robust and trying to, you know, fight the good fight. And you know, we have you know, our budget is is well under $4 million a year at this point. I mean, we're obviously trying to grow it. And this isn't an appeal. I'm just saying, like, if you compare the resource gap between, you know, even if you talk about all the groups that are kind of aware of Christian nationalism and what its corrosive impacts on our society, it I mean, it doesn't start to match like it's like it's actually almost insignificant.

And and that is what we're seeing when we look around and say, oh, how did this happen? I mean, and so people really need to wake up. This is and and I know your time is precious. I thank you so much. But I do want to. One of the interesting advents now is, Christian nationalists adopting the Christian nationalist language and saying, yeah, I'm a Christian nationalist. Let's go. Like, what do you think about that? And, you know, is there are we giving them power by giving them that name? I'm just like kind of like I'm interested in them. It's no longer maybe considered a a bad thing anymore. And they're kind of leaning into it. I mean, we saw that it's been happening for a couple of years, but now it feels like that's growing more. I've seen some reporting that that's growing more familiar. And I mean, naming things is not really what the important thing is, but I'm just curious how you are thinking about that.

KATHERINE STEWART:

I think an important point to keep in mind is that religion in America has really been shifting. Religion is becoming hotter, more about the forces of good and evil; in many instances more charismatic - even though many people adopting the language of spiritual warfare are not themselves charismatic Christians. And this shows up very much in the Christian Nationalist base's approach to the election. Christian nationalism is sort of a reactionary nationalism. It's about who gets to properly belong in the country and who doesn't. So it's fusing a kind of religious identity with a partisan political identity, that you're either in or you're out. You're with us or you're not.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Well, and they are, like, conveniently describing themselves as the gatekeepers of who is in and who is out. And, you know, like, you know, you can come in, but you have to identify this way and you have to believe these things, or else you're on the side of Satan. And that's very convenient.

The last thing you know, we're we're very interested in how now that, that Trump has regained his access to the white House, what this means for Project 2025. And I don't know if you've done much work or, you know, if that's been a focus. You have. You've been doing so much. I don't want to put one more thing that you should be doing, but I am I am curious, yeah. You've thought a lot about this. Can you just say a little bit about, like, making that link? Because I think a lot of people look at project 2025 and say, ugh, that's not good. Or, you know, that's the majority opinion, but they're not connecting it to this other thing that's happening, that's being driven by all this money and all this effort, which is a Christian nationalist playbook. So how do you combine those two?

KATHERINE STEWART:

I've written a lot about Project 2025, as well as the agenda of the America First Policy Institute, which is a sort of MAGA think tank, in my new book, Money, Lies, and God, and a lot of the sort of intellectual leaders of the movement who - some of them are representatives of the religious right, others are representatives of the New Right, which is an intellectual movement that is less explicitly theocratic in its approach, but more explicitly anti-democratic in its approach. And so if you look at these policy papers for Project 2025 or some of the material coming out of the America First American First Policy Institute, you can see it's kind of a marriage of those two ideas. The  Christian right and the New right have made a kind of marriage of convenience. And you see the aims of both of those movements echoed in those documents.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

This is so helpful. We just really appreciate everything that you are doing, and I'm just so grateful, that you took the time to be with us. This is, you know, obviously, the first podcast that, sorry, this is obviously the first show that we've had since the election, and we're trying to make sense of it.

And we're also trying to figure out, like, what what do we do? And I think everybody is asking, what do we do now? and so I just want to thank you so much for being back on the state of belief, and we look forward to having a more in-depth conversation when your new book comes out. It comes out in January, right?

KATHERINE STEWART:

The end of January, beginning of February. And I just want to say, thank you so much. It's really wonderful to connect. We have one another and that's really important. And we have to offer one another support. I'm really grateful for your fellowship.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Well, thank you so much for being here on The State of Belief. I really appreciate it.

KATHERINE STEWART:

I'm really grateful for you to make time for me today.

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REV. PAUL BRANDEIS RAUSHENBUSH, HOST:

Leading up to November 5th, there was lots of discussion of the role religion was playing in the campaigns and get-out-the-vote efforts, as well as voter protection initiatives. I am joined by two legends of religion reporting. The first is Religion News Service Projects Editor and National Reporter Adelle Banks. She is the co-author of the newly-released book Becoming a Future Ready Church. Also with us, RNS’ National Reporter Bob Smietana, author of the book Re-organized Religion: The Reshaping of the American Church and Why it Matters. Adelle and Bob, welcome back to The State of Belief!

BOB SMIETANA, GUEST:

Glad to be here.

ADELLE M. BANKS, GUEST:

Thank you for having us.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Well, let's start with just some basic demographics. If we could, Bob, how did the religion vote show up in 2024? What were some of the contours that you saw or that have been reported on where people landed on the polls?

BOB SMIETANA:

Sure. So one of the big numbers in the exit polls is that 58% of Catholics voted for Donald Trump, and 63% of Protestants. So in general, he won the Christian vote. 78% of Jews, 59% of other non-Christian faiths, and 71% of people with no religious affiliation voted for Kamala Harris. But perhaps one other number worth noting is that White Christians - in particular, 72% of White Protestants, 61% of White Catholics - voted for Trump. But still, the Christian vote. And that's particularly telling in places like swing states, where the White Christian vote or the Christian vote is really important: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, where it was very close.

The one other last thing is that Joe Biden won about 50% of the Catholic vote; and the swing there, between 50 and 58%, seems to be one of the big factors.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

There's a couple other areas, you know, I think among kind of those identifying as a among those identifying as white evangelical Protestants, the number actually jumps even higher.

And, you know, I know there was a lot of outreach to that community among some of my friends and people you know, but I think it basically was even more than with Biden.

BOB SMIETANA:

Yeah, it was about 80% this year.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Yeah, yeah. but then there's also, you know, of course, the black church, you know, and Adelle, I'm just curious what you've been. What what were some of the numbers there? And, you know, how was the how was the black church? how did the black church show up on November 5th?

ADELLE BANKS:

I don't know about the breakdown of the specifically Black Church within the Black American vote, but I do know there was a lot of work ahead of time with different groups representing Black churches. In fact, the day or two after Vice President Harris said she was running, there was a mobilization with different kinds of Black American groups, and one of them was called “Win With the Black Church.” And it had a bunch of folks on that from a variety of perspectives within the Black Church world.

And then there also was a separate First Ladies call, who were women who were wives of Black pastors. So there was a definite mobilization, summoned in different ways than in the past. And it can't be said that everybody who's African-American, obviously, voted for Vice President Harris, which is one of the things that sort of come out from this election.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

And then, of course, there's the, you know, Latino vote, Which was much more evenly split between the two candidates. Not completely, but. And I think especially among evangelical Protestants, Latinos, there was, you know, a shift towards president elect Trump. So I think there was a there were some interesting dynamics going on. And and I think it just, you know, that that is not, you know, not something to just gloss over. It was really a major part of the kind of, you know, what what happened on November 5th.

Bob, you wrote a piece called White Christians Made Donald Trump President Again. What was the major thesis of that piece?

BOB SMIETANA:

In the last eight years, the last three elections, there's been a lot of focus on White evangelicals who are very strong supporters of Donald Trump - maybe not as much looking at Catholics and mainliners who also supported Donald Trump, particularly in swing states. Those are the states where you don't have as many evangelicals, but you have a lot of mainliners and Catholics. And those groups also have been breaking, over the last 20 years, more and more Republican. So some of this is Republican allegiance, but some of this is that White Christians in general, for whatever reasons, have leaned toward Donald Trump in a way that gets overshadowed by some of the controversy over some of Donald Trump's evangelical supporters has overshadowed the way that sort of normal church folks have also leaned Republican and voted for him.

I think the other the point you said earlier, in the past, White Catholics have leaned Democratic, White Catholics now lean Republican. Hispanic Catholics leaned Democratic. That switched. So even Hispanic Catholics moved towards the Republican Party.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Yeah. It's it's it's hard to talk about. honestly, I'm trying to figure out how to say this, but it's hard to talk about some of these religious communities without mentioning race or gender. And I think, you know, it just seems to me that, the fact that we did have a candidate who was, who was black and also of South Asian descent and also a woman, I just I don't know if the church trends more, I don't know how to say it, you know, sexist or racist, but, you know, there is like a, you know, there's just a real question mark for me about how that played. And I don't expect either of you to have the the exact answer to that. But, you know, in at least in a lot of religious traditions, there's a strong sense of, Men as in control, and that for some people that might be hard to break out of.

So I don't know what that, you know, if either of you have comments on that.

ADELLE BANKS:

When I wrote about the partnerships that had happened between Black churches and Black Greek letter organizations, the leaders of both were saying that they cannot say that either group are monolithic in their political leanings. And in fact, in one case, a person I talked to had been going canvassing in Atlanta was with either groups, either people who were Black Christians or people who were sorority members. They were running into people as they canvassed who were not comfortable voting for a woman. So it was something that definitely came up that they heard as they went door to door, even if there was still a seeming majority of people in support of Vice President Harris.

BOB SMIETANA:

And the questions of how the inflation is doing, that's been an issue; the circumstances of Kamala Harris jumping in at the last minute, this is also unusual. It's hard to draw data from this, because the circumstances of this election were so different.

I do think, looking back, that there's this, unease in America about what the role of religion is, how religion has played a long history in it. America has both been diverse and very Christian in the past, and how that will play out in the future has been up for grabs. There's been a reality that organized religion is declining, that Christianity is declining. This appears to be an election in which some of those Christian groups found a candidate that took their side and said, no, we're more comfortable with the candidate who seems to be on our side. Whether he, with Donald Trump, reflects all our values, he's on our side - and we don't feel that the other party’s on our side. And there's some of that polarization where it's us-versus-them that's going on.

And then this unease of America moving from a more Christian nation to a more interfaith nation, that's a bumpy path. And how that all plays out in day-to-day life is complicated.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Well, you know, Donald Trump was saying explicitly like I'm your best, I'm your last hope to Christians, you know and and after me there's no no chance for you. So is definitely giving out that message.

I think it's notable given all of you know, the question marks about you know, how Gaza was going to play out that, you know, some Muslims sat it out or went for Donald Trump? Well, actually kind of the normal amount of Jews voted for the Democratic candidate. I guess even though I think there's there may have been some question mark about how strong she would stand with Israel. So I think she. I don't think, you know, it can't be ignored that there was some way that the Gaza conflict showed up in influencing different people.

BOB SMIETANA:

And Donald Trump won Dearborn, Michigan, I understand. So this is the whole thing about trying to read the tea leaves on this is there's so many things that were different. And the Republican coalition, in terms of religion, is very White and very Christian.

The Democratic coalition is a mix of Black Protestants, Hispanic Catholics in the past, people with no religion, Muslims, Jews. So it's a much less monolithic group, which is harder to hold together. And the world is, as we know, pulling in lots of different places. So there's more tension on that group, where the other group is more is more consolidated.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Adelle, I'm curious what your kind of any reporting you might be doing or how you've been hearing about. just kind of a postmortem for many of those folks who really, really believed in Harris's candidacy. And our, you know, this is a broader question. But like those folks who are really feeling devastated right now, have you been, you know, tapped into any of the kind of I don't know what there's been if there's been vigils or healing services or things like that. Have you been hearing about anything like that?

ADELLE BANKS:

Well, I just have been talking to some clergy of a variety of sorts about how they're kind of preparing for their Sunday sermons. And I did just get off the phone with one Black minister who said that he's going to be addressing grief, and talking about the need to have kind of a prophetic grief, he said, as opposed to, as he said, a pathetic grief. That people should be trying to be resilient and moving forward, and thinking of examples in the past where African-Americans have made it through difficult times. And that's his interpretation of what needs to happen now. so that's one thing that I've heard.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Well, that'll preach, as they say, prophetic versus pathetic. I can, I can, I can I'm, I'm listening out for that, that sermon. any, any final words about like how this, how this maybe implicates religion reporting or you all you're both really, like, made a career and made a such a contribution to telling stories about religion and, and, you know, helping helping Americans understand religion in real time. And I'm just curious how this is making each of you feel as far as the the religion beat going forward and some of what you're anticipating will be coming your way.

Let's start with Adele, and then we can go to Bob.

ADELLE BANKS:

Well, I think part of the story has bee,n this time around, as in other cases, but maybe more powerfully, is the issue of partnerships. And like I mentioned, for instance, the Black churches and the Black Greek letter organizations were working together. But with Faiths United to Save Democracy, which is the organization that trained many of the people who were poll chaplains or peacekeepers at the sites where people were voting, that group has gone from being kind of primarily African American leaders to a much broader range of people - not just only Christians, but Jews, as well. And now more secular people, people involved with secular organizations. So I think that's a continuing story about the partnerships. And I guess the question will be, how much will these partnerships come together now that Election Day is behind us? And there is talk about some of these people, poll chaplains and others, needing to be around for potential other tension points between now and Inauguration Day.

So, I think that that work continues, and I think the partnerships that may occur will be worth us watching.

BOB SMIETANA:

I think the religion people are going to continue to matter - because they also think about politics one part of the year, they think about their community all the rest of the year. And it was interesting, a couple of things on Election day: One, there was, at least when I was up in Wisconsin, a sense of people ready to be done. They're ready to vote, get it done with. There was relief. There was not disruption at polls. In other parts of the country there were some, but not overall disruption; that there were some clear outcomes, even though everyone wasn’t happy.

On the evening of the election, I went to a prayer service at a church that's a shared space between a Black and White church. And what struck me was, most, how many folks prayed for peace, but also just prayed for: How do we get along? Because they didn't know how it was going to turn out, but they realized, no matter what happens, half the people in the country are going to be really angry. And then how do we get out of that kind of polarization? There was, almost more than the election result, was a: What kind of country are you going to live in? How do we get along with people? How do we talk together? How do we not hate our neighbors after this, and a real sense of being done with that kind of polarization, and wanting something better.

So that was actually the most hopeful part of the day, was this kind of strong determination of, we want to live with our neighbors. We want to get along, we want to build a better country. And we disagree about how to get there, but we're not going to give up on it.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Adele Banks is project editor and national reporter at Religion News Service. Bob Smetana is national reporter at Religion News Service. Both of you are so valuable. I am so appreciative to you and thank you for being here on this important week, this state of belief.

BOB SMIETANA:

Thanks so much.

ADELLE BANKS:

Thanks for having us.

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