Font Size
100%
Archive
Sunday worship at Lakewood Church, Houston Texas. Photo by Wikimedia Commons user ToBeDaniel used under a Creative Commons By Attribution license.
The Religion Trends Shaping American Politics
January 18, 2024
Dr. Ryan Burge and Jeff Sharlet join to talk about the rise of the new religious right and the trends shaping how some faithful view the culture wars in literal ways.
Dr. Ryan Burge Ph.D.
The Rise of NonDenominational Christianity January 19, 2024
Dr. Ryan Burge, a political scientist and a professor who studies how religion and faith influence civic behavior, discusses the trends and data that may explain Mr. Trump’s ongoing appeal, evidenced in the 2024 Iowa Caucus results. Burge is the author of four books, including 20 Myths about Religion and Politics in America and The Great De-Churching. He teaches political science at Eastern Illinois University.

Ryan Burge, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Political Science and Graduate Coordinator at Eastern Illinois University. His research focuses on the interaction of religiosity and political behavior in the American context.
Jeff Sharlet
Scenes from the "Undertow" (encore) January 18, 2024
Journalist Jeff Sharlet outlines how those on the far right have manipulated the memory of slain Capitol rioter Ashli Babbitt to become "a martyr of the revolution." Yet the genuine Babbitt is almost unrecognizable from the symbol of white Christian womanhood she has become.

During a visit to an Omaha, Neb. church preparing for a holy war, Sharlet was threatened and forced off both church and public property at the point of a gun. He said the moment was pivotal for him as a writer and an American. When a church usher asks him, "How do you know I don't have a gun?" Sharlet says this "has become the American question."

Finally, Sharlet traces the signposts of fascism found in this new "age of martyrs" and offers a roadmap that may avert the "slow civil war."

(This is an edited version of a story that first ran in April 2023.)

Jeff Sharlet, Frederick Sessions Beebe '35 Professor in the Art of Writing and Director of Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. Journalist and New York Times best-selling author — most recently of The Undertow: A Slow Civil War from W. W. Norton & Company.



The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War" by Jeff Sharlet. W. W. Norton & Company
The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War
W. W. Norton & Company




This week's closing music, New Hope, by Audiobinger,
used under a Creative Commons By Attribution 4.0 license.

Additional music by Blue Dot Session.