(spirited upbeat music) - Evangelicals are under fire for selling their souls for political power.

But Christian activists say they're saving America from moral collapse.

Today on "Common Ground," do evangelicals get a bum rap?

We're starting today's show with a conversation with Reverend Al Sharpton.

Here it is.

To me, the overarching question, Jesus said to love your enemies.

Why are so many evangelicals embracing cruelty in the name of Christianity?

- I think that the unfortunate, and in many ways unpardonable reason that many of the evangelicals are embracing cruelty is because they are putting the expedience that they are seeking in terms of some kind of reward from political officeholders or some economic benefits, or protecting some status they have, over what the scriptures say.

You cannot reconcile how you have Jesus who fed hungry people and looked for the outcast, and wanted to heal those that were ill and reconcile that with people, that would want to end people's healthcare, that would want to condemn people because of their race, gender, or their choice of life.

You can't reconcile that description.

The real challenge for the evangelicals is to put their politics and their Bible, and tell me how they reconcile both.

There's no way you could read this Bible that we claim to believe in and have that in lockstep with the politics they practice.

- But Rev, they seem to be doing just fine.

I mean, they are out there doing just that.

Now, they may be the loudest voices in the room.

Are they aware of what they're doing?

- I think that some of the followers are not aware, but the leaders have to be aware, 'cause they are people that have studied the scriptures, studying what the basis of their churches are all about.

But I think that a lot of the followers, particularly when you have followers that's based on a charismatic ministry, they're following the leader rather than following the principles and the actual theology of the given evangelical church.

- But they see the meshugaas that goes on in the news about people in Springfield, Ohio eating pets and stuff that's made up and lies.

I mean, the followers see that, don't they?

- They see that, and then they're told by the right wing media that those are lies, or that they are being fabricated.

So it's kind of where you get your news from, and then where you get your analysis of the news.

So when you have high powered stations and social media, let's not forget it, Elon Musk and them on a lot of social media telling you that don't believe your own lying eyes.

You don't, you believe there's something wrong with you.

- Has the intensity of this surprised even you, in terms of how ugly and vitriolic, and just hostile it's all become?

- It has surprised me, but not shocked me, because every time we've seen a social movement in this country, whether it was women's rights, whether it was civil rights, whether it was LGBT rights, we saw a backlash.

Donald Trump and the evangelicals with him, are backlash to Barack Obama, and those of us that saw social justice as our religious calling.

I expected a backlash.

I was surprised what so many of the evangelicals would go, but I was not surprised we'd get backlash.

As a kid when I was just grown up way before I was old enough to understand this, the Conservatives of the South supported segregation and supported George Wallace.

So if we are to understand where we in history was never the Conservative right wing churches that led any of these movements.

They always were on the other side.

And if your biblical Jesus had to fight the rulers of the church.

The last time we saw Jesus in the synagogue, He said, "You've turned my Father's house from a house of prayer to a den of thieves."

And unfortunately, that's what we're seeing today.

- You mentioned when you were growing up, so I'm going to take a little detour here, and ask you about, you were four years old when you started preaching.

- Yep.

- And you were out there wearing your mother's robe- - Yep.

- As a costume.

Did you have any sense of what you were doing?

- I had a sense that I was watching the Bishop, and I wanted to be like that.

And when I was a member of the junior worship board and we had our anniversary, I said I wanted to preach.

They let me preach it.

About nine of the people in the church that morning stood me on a box, and I preached from St.

John's 14:1, "Let not your heart be troubled.

You believe in God, believe also in me."

I was maybe nine or 10 before I understood what I was really saying.

I was saying what I heard.

I was a good mimic of the Bishop and other churches.

I toured with Mahalia Jackson when I was seven, eight years old as the "Wonder Boy Preacher."

So I know a lot about how sometimes you will just go by what you are taught and repeat what you've been fed.

And as you get older, you start to mature and say, "Well, I really do believe this, or this I think is just some historic reference," but really is not a fundamental belief.

So I grew up in the Pentecostal Church, so that's why I understand people that follow things that they have not really delved into for themselves.

- Let's go back a little bit in history to Jerry Falwell, 'cause that was another touchpoint, where you were looking at people being very nervous about seismic shifts in social norms, sex, drugs, rock and roll.

And evangelicals really took that cause up the Moral Majority.

How formative was that as you saw it?

- I think Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, ah, they were very formative, they helped to bring in the Reagan era.

They anointed it, they blessed it.

I don't know that you would've had the cultural acceptance of a Hollywood star, like Ronald Reagan, had second marriage, if they not had the anointment of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

So I think that you just seeing that on steroids with Donald Trump, and those of us that fought and lived through Ronald Reagan see this as a bad sequel to the Ronald Reagan presidency.

And in many ways, Donald Trump is dealing with the same element and the same kinds of people.

I got to know Jerry Falwell.

We would debate each other and all.

Jerry Falwell was a charismatic guy, but he understood completely as a strategist.

He was playing on the fears of people that felt the America they knew was getting away from them.

So they would rather go with someone whose lifestyle is antithetical to everything they preach, but they're holding onto them because they feel that their life is being disabled and dismantled, when in fact that's not happening at all.

We're expanding the country, we're not trying to take anybody's place in the country.

- But that's the ultimate fear that they're coming to take our religion.

I mean, the seeds were sown during the Moral Majority, the holy war that ensued.

And that's what we're seeing sort of writ large today, aren't we?

- We're seeing the children and grandchildren of the Moral Majority followers now in evangelicals for Trump.

They're coming to take our religion, they're coming to take our values, they're coming to take our standards, and they're going even further than the moral majority, they want to make laws where you can't even teach certain things in school and you can't talk about certain things.

So they're, in the name of preserving their democracy, they want to establish a theocracy, and they're doing it with a man who has committed openly every sin they're preaching against.

- I'm just going to touch on that for a minute, because the role models that we're looking at here, have some flaws, to put it mildly.

What is the disconnect?

What do they tell themselves when they look at somebody with a track record that includes a lot of unsavory history?

- I think they tell themselves that the purpose that he serves is more important than the flaws that he possessed.

I think it's a kind of real twisted way of doing it.

But they've convinced themselves, I've talked to some of them, that well, God uses imperfect people.

And I think that the argument that we raise is, well, if God's using imperfect people, then why isn't he doing what God would have us do according to the Bible?

I mean, we talking about what's in the Bible you're holding.

And I think that it is more a cultural bent and a sociological fear that my environment, my setting, my family, my community is going to be destabilized by this.

So I'm going to justify it with this.

I'm going to hold on to the only thing I know, my religion, and they're being used and misused by people that have sway over that, and Donald Trump personifies that.

- Okay, so how do we start to get the balance back between religious fervor and political fervor?

- I think the way we have to get the balance back is to confront it, to be able to stand up to it, and to put the clean glass next to the dirty glass.

When you see people around about to lose their Medicaid and Medicare, when it starts becoming personal, where they see what they're losing under this demagogic kind of right wing, evangelical-created guy, I think you will get their attention.

You know, as a kid, I worked in Operation Bread Baskets under Jesse Jackson and Reverend William Jones.

I learned a lot about Dr.

King.

How did Dr.

King stand up to those in his days?

How did Jesse in his days stand up to Jerry Falwell?

That's what we're going to have to do now.

This is going to be a long distance run.

This will not be a quick move.

This is going to be... They built it from the Moral Majority 40 years ago to now.

We've got to begin to be prepared to do the same thing.

- Marathon, not a sprint.

- Correct.

- I know you faced a lot of daunting, tough challenges.

How does this one stack up?

- I think that the challenges that I faced and I've seen have been hills and hilltops.

But we're facing a mountain this time, and we going to have to buckle down for the long haul, 'cause now you have somebody that has no regard, no regret, and does not in any way, shape, or form have any shame.

And shameless people are more dangerous 'cause you can't even appeal to them being embarrassed when they're beyond being embarrassed.

- How optimistic are you that we're going to see it flip back?

- Oh, I'm optimistic because I really believe in the Bible they preach.

I believe that right will overpower wrong.

I believe at the end we'll win, because they will become, they being the Trumps of the world, become so consumed with themselves that they will even start afflicting the people that they have brought into their tent or brought into their following.

So it'll turn around.

I just hope that we can hold on long enough for the turn.

- You've done a great public service today.

At least from my point of view, you have helped explain the mentality that we see, but don't always understand.

Thank you for that, Reverend Al Sharpton.

- Thank you for having me, thank you.

- We're delighted to welcome Dr.

Andrew Farley.

He's the lead pastor of the nationally-known, Grace Church.

Welcome, welcome, good to have you with us.

- Hey, thank you for having me, Jane.

- Andrew, you are well aware that evangelicals are, I want to put this as accurately as possible, being cruel and hostile to people who are vulnerable, and they're doing it in the name of God.

They claim to be devout Christians, and yet they're going against God's teachings.

What do you have to say about it?

- Well, I have to say, first of all, I don't know who's a believer and who's not.

I mean, a lot of people claim to be Christians, a lot of people claim to be, you know, of God's family.

But I don't agree with the statement that Christians are doing this.

I think our government is making choices.

I think we're making choices because we don't want our country overpopulated.

We're making tough choices that I don't agree with everything that's happening, and I'm sure you don't either.

But we have to make choices as a nation sometimes that make people unhappy, and they make people disappointed.

And if you went around conducting government just to make every single person happy, then you would basically have no nation at all.

And so I get it, every four years there's a whiplash as the administration changes from Democrat to Republican and back to Democrat.

- Right!

- But the whole point of our discussion today, I think, is that there is a difference between being a believer and being a Republican.

And so to say that all Christians or that Christians are doing this, I don't think that's accurate.

You could argue that Republicans are making choices you don't like, but I don't think that we can see the spiritual hearts of everybody involved, and some of them are not Christians.

- No, I want to make it really clear, there are millions of good and sincere evangelicals doing good things in the public square.

They're mentoring young people, they work in shelters, they do all kinds of things that comport with what God teaches.

- Uh-huh!

- The point I'm making is that some of the other folks are basically saying, "My way or the highway."

- Well, you're the one conflating Christianity and politics at this point because what you're saying is, with a reverend or a pastor on camera, what you're saying is, is that I need to speak to the current administration's choices because they're, quote, "Christians."

And what I would say is no, that is not the case.

If you look at Jesus and what He did concerning the current administration of His day, He did nothing to change that governing body.

Neither did the Apostle Paul and neither did the apostles of their day, they left the governing bodies, the Roman Empire, for example, entirely alone.

- Right, right!

- So there is a separation of church and state, and if you want to ask me what I believe as a Republican, we can talk about that.

But as far as being a pastor, I'm not going to blame Christians for anything that's happening.

- Okay, and I don't want to blame Christians.

But I do want to get into the mindset.

- I don't see into their hearts, I don't know what they all believe.

I'm going to speak just generically for, you know, a large swath of Republicans.

I think what they're saying is, "Yes, we know there's tough decisions."

I wouldn't want to be part of the administration.

I would think they wake up every day and have some very difficult decisions about, you know, we have illegal immigrants who came here illegally, and now they're here, and some of them have established families, and it's heartbreaking, and so what do you do?

And I don't envy their position.

They don't want to overpopulate the United States, they want to be careful about our economy.

Some of this is motivated by economy and pocketbook, and making sure we try to balance the budget.

So the moment we go from trying to understand their economic motives to then assigning some other motive, I think that's where we make our mistake, and that's where we don't have common ground anymore, because we end up demonizing the other party.

- Exactly, all right, well at this point, I'm going to go to a clip from "The Grace Message."

- Okay.

- And I tuned in, and the woman who was on the call was upset about the fact she'd been at a church event, and she saw clergy, congregants disparaging LGBTQ people in a very ugly way.

- Mm-hmm!

- And she was really upset.

- Yeah.

- She was saying, reporting, that it was being said they should be taken outside and shot.

- Oof, horrible.

- And here is how you answered her.

- We don't do any politics on this program, of course.

But at the same time, I hear you that we should never be using the name of Jesus to talk about getting rid of people or threatening a people group, or using violence against someone.

So I don't know anything, quite frankly, about this movement or this reawakening, or any of these meetings.

But from the way you describe it, all I would say is this, it may be a movement and it may be taking place, and it may have politics of some kind attached to it, but let's not call it Christianity.

I mean, whatever it is, and I'll make no judgements about it, you know, because I don't know enough, but whatever it is, let's not call it Christianity.

- All right, well, we've... That's the whole point of this.

- Yes.

- Because a lot of people are calling it Christianity.

And doesn't that, in some way, taint or sort of infect the work you're trying to do?

- Well, so that call was about a church setting, and something being said in church about a group of people, which I think is hateful and horrible.

And I speak out against that because that's not the place of the church.

And then we need to pull out an entirely different topic.

And the question is, "What do we think of immigration and United States government, and the administration's view on immigration?"

Those are, to me, worlds apart, because I'm not running the United States government, I'm not in charge of the economy, and I'm not, you know, making those decisions.

But I am a pastor at a church and I wouldn't want to see any hate toward a group.

So balancing a national budget and considering borders and immigration is one thing, and then hating a group in church is another thing.

- Okay, so this approach, I know that you've tried to do something called "God Without Religion."

I want to go back to you for a minute, because clearly you're not the same old, same old that some people are used to.

What is God without religion?

- Yeah, so that term, used very loosely for the title of my book, I mean, God without legalism, God without rule following, looking at Christianity as a dynamic and vibrant relationship with Jesus, rather than just rule following, you can find rules in any religion.

There will always be some sort of book, some sort of following, and some sort of leader.

And if you do a good job following the rules, maybe there's a carrot at the end of the stick.

And then if you disobey, there's punishment.

But we're showcasing that Christianity is deeper and better than that, that it's not really a religion at its core, that it's about being fully forgiven and being loved unconditionally, and getting to be clean and close to God for free because of God's grace.

So just exposing what I would call some Bible belt religiosity where everybody's focused on behavior management, self-improvement, and not really understanding the gospel.

I guess I'd say there's a whole lot of people that know about the Bible, but there's very few that understand the gospel.

- And why is that?

- I think we take our type A personalities into church and the type As end up running church largely- - Of course!

- And then you have a program, you know, where everybody's just trying to engage in self-improvement.

And meanwhile, I mean, the gospel's staring us in the face saying, "It's not by works, you can't earn it, you can't achieve it, you can't maintain or sustain it.

It's all about what Jesus did for you, not what you're doing for Him."

And so if we're not careful, we end up rejecting people, we end up teaching them that God's in love with a future version of you that does better and tries harder and prays more and gives more money and does more.

And, you know, that's rejection for church people.

I think that we really need to be showcasing the gospel and what Jesus did for us.

- Well, you are actually, and this is something else, we're going to have Sarah McCammon on shortly to talk about... She's an exvangelical, an NPR correspondent.

And a lot of people are leaving the church.

- Yes.

- I mean, or they're leaving, at least, the church, maybe not the faith.

But people like Pete Wehner, I mean great thinkers, Tim Alberta, Russell Moore has made a change, he's also going to be with us.

The point I'm making is that why is your message... Is your message resonating with those folks?

- Oh my goodness, I mean, our entire following, I would say at The Grace Message is X this and X that, you know, X this denomination and X that movement, they're burned out, they're dried up, they're looking for answers.

They've been on the self-improvement wagon and they're ready to jump off and say, "Hey, this isn't working.

I can never get to perfection.

I can never do enough.

I'm tired and I need answers.

And the gospel has to be better than this.

This is exhausting."

And so, you know, I think that's what lifeless religiosity does.

It burns us out, or if we are privileged to be a leader in it, then maybe we stick in it a little longer and we give it our best shot and somebody gives us a reward at the end of the journey.

But the bottom line is that's not Christianity.

I mean, Christianity, the gospel that people were willing to die for and be tortured and killed for was not a self-improvement program.

It was really the radical idea that your next sin is already forgiven, the radical idea that you don't need tablets of stone to guide your behavior every day, but that you can have God's Spirit inside of you, that's radically motivating you from the core of your being.

I mean, real Christianity is a miracle, it's mystical.

It's a miracle life where Jesus lives in me.

And I don't think people are hearing that.

- And it doesn't affect your immigration policy.

All right, let me just- - You're right, that's right.

That's right.

- Okay, let me just, 'cause we're going to bring Sarah out in a minute, last question, you know, we've had people, "New York Times" columnist, David French, come on and tell horrible stories about how they adopted an African child, and essentially were run out of their church because the child was African.

- Mm-hmm!

- People being thrown out of the church, because their behavior, again, does not conform to what that particular membership wants to see.

And those are the stories that get the oxygen, Andrew.

Those are the ones people hear.

And- - Yeah, so- - Yeah, go ahead.

- Right, well, so when you said, "And it doesn't affect your immigration policy or opinion," you know, what I would say to that is it does, and that's why I say the administration has a tough job.

But, you know, being a believer, having Christ in me, it will affect the way I balance my budget at home.

It should affect the way we balance the budget at a national level.

There's things to wrestle with, but being a Christian doesn't mean that you please everybody.

And being a Christian doesn't mean you bankrupt the USA to just invite millions and billions of more to dive in across borders because hey, we're a Christian nation, so come on in, and let's bankrupt ourselves together.

So I think that's the misunderstanding there.

But you know, back to your question about racism, obviously the scriptures speak vehemently against partiality and racism.

I mean, the whole point of the gospel is that Jesus hangs on a cross and He says, "I'm inviting all people, whoever calls on my name will be saved."

So I think the gospel is actually the cure for racism.

It's the cure for shunning people because of their background.

And yet it doesn't mean that we start a country and then bankrupt it, letting everyone in, or compromise our administration just because hey, we're going to say, "Well, everybody is welcome, no rules, no restrictions, come on in."

I don't know a nation on the planet like that.

- Okay, now joining our conversation is someone who grew up in the evangelical culture.

Sarah McCammon is a national political correspondent for NPR.

Great to have you with us today.

You are what's known as an exvangelical, you left the church, right?

- Right, an exvangelical is sort of a loose term for someone who has spent time in or identified as an evangelical, spent time in that world, and no longer does for whatever reason.

But it was a word I came across long after I myself had sort of made a very quiet departure from evangelical spaces.

I came across it as a reporter for NPR covering the 2016 campaign.

And just became fascinated with the way people were using that term and the ideas they were talking about as they did.

- Okay, but the title, you did chronicle your experience in a book, which is entitled "The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church."

So there was some loving, there was some living, and then you left.

Why did you leave?

- I kind of go into that in the book, and almost every chapter is organized around a theme of sort of cognitive dissonance or tension, or just points of sort of disagreement or confusion, or disillusionment, depending on what word you want to use.

And so I talk about themes of, you know, abuse and trauma related to the church, related to religion.

I also talk about rejection of secular authority.

And you know, for me, there were a lot of different reasons.

One of the central characters in the book was my grandfather who came out as gay later in life and my relationship with him.

And, you know, it was a really critical experience for me and sort of understanding the world a little bit differently and broadening my perspective on what I had been taught.

- Okay, well, let's roll it back to when you were younger, because I want to go into, before you, this was the journey for you.

But before that, you were very tightly sort of embraced by church institutions.

Everything you were taught had to be informed by scripture.

You weren't taught evolution, is that correct?

- Yeah, so I was raised in a K-12 Christian school.

There are thousands of these across the country.

And I document in the book, I went and sort of pulled some of my old textbooks or very similar textbooks from organizations like Bob Jones University and Abeka Books, which are still, many of them in publication.

And, you know, I looked really closely at how they talked about everything from race to science, and documented the ways in which I would say there was a lot that was missing and there was a lot that was inaccurate.

A lot of missing pieces in American history, sort of a glossing over in some cases of things like slavery.

And when it comes to science, you know, a rejection of modern evolutionary theory, this was something that for me as a young adult, really around the time I was in high school, college started to become really troubling for me because it was apparent to me that what I was being taught and what these textbooks were teaching did not align with what the vast majority of scientists believed and understood to be the case about the world in favor of a narrative that, you know, aligned with our belief system.

And, you know, I think that's a temptation that I think is understandable- - Right!

- No one wants to have their belief system shaken.

But for me, it just wasn't satisfying, and I felt like I needed to try to understand what was really going on.

- Going to bring Andrew in in a minute, but I want to ask you another question, that has to do with issues.

That's a non-acceptance of facts.

Your grandfather is another matter.

That's much more emotional, personal, visceral, how is that different?

- There was a very, you know, sort of carefully prescribed set of ideas that I was taught growing up by my church and my community and my Christian school.

And that included some ideas about human sexuality.

It included, you know, this idea that marriage was only between a man and a woman, and anyone who didn't fit into that didn't fit into really God's will or God's design.

And when you also know and love people who tell you, like my grandfather, that he knew he was different from a very young age, that he, you know, didn't have a vocabulary for it growing up in the 1920s and '30s, but knew that something was different about himself, and this was always true about himself.

And, you know, as I got to know him and I got to know other LGBTQ people, again, it became harder and harder for me to accept the idea that, you know, this person who I believed was created by God was somehow created in the wrong way.

- I think that probably Andrew's had the experience of having explained this to maybe some of his congregants.

Andrew, I've seen you nodding a lot throughout what Sarah's been talking about.

What are your thoughts?

- Well, I mean, I think there is definitely an explanation for why Christians hold the views that they view.

As far as homosexuality, I mean, explaining homosexuality, what I would say there is that the biblical narrative, as far as I understand it, is yes, God created all of us, and then there was a fall.

I mean, Genesis 1 does not end the story.

And so then there's a fall of humanity, and there's not just homosexuality, but I mean, there's 1,000 issues at the fall that unfold throughout the Old Testament and into the New Testament.

And then that's the whole reason Jesus is here to save us and forgive us and give us new life.

It's not that there's one issue on the table, there's about 1,000.

And you know, you look at Romans for example, in the same paragraph where homosexuality is mentioned, you also see disobedience to parents, it's in the same list.

So my point is that any Christians that are picking on one particular group or pointing out one particular thing, you know, they're pointing their finger in one direction.

And you know, as the old saying goes, "You've got several fingers pointed right back at you."

And I think that's what Romans is saying is that we're all apart from Christ, we're all in the same boat.

- All right, well, your wife, Katharine Hayhoe, Andrew, we've been honored to have her as a guest twice here on this broadcast, "Common Ground."

She is the Chief Scientist of The Nature Conservancy and a devout evangelical.

Here's how she reconciles her faith with her science.

For example, if somebody, a true believer, a Christian, an evangelical Christian, comes up to you and says, "This is not in the Bible.

This is not something that God is saying is going to happen."

What is your response to that person?

- Well, if somebody comes with sciencey-sounding arguments, we need to give them a short, sciencey response, a short science response, I should say, which is "No, it's not natural causes.

Now, let me tell you about the amazing advances that wind energy is making in Texas."

When they come with religiously sounding arguments, we need to reply with a religious answer.

God gave humans responsibility over every living thing in this planet.

It's right there in Genesis 1.

And have I told you about these incredible churches and how they are helping out with the climate crisis?

What could your church do as well?

- Her point is she's able to bridge.

A lot of people are starting to try and do that on some of these issues.

But for right now, you know, we're marking, Sarah, the centennial of the Scopes Monkey Trial that was basically supposed to settle fundamentalism, Christianity.

And instead, religion is being wielded as a political weapon by some people.

What are your thoughts on that?

- Mapping religion on politics often has very ugly consequences all over the world and throughout history.

And so, while certainly I think all of us bring our values into the way we think about politics and voting, I think it's just important as sort of a descriptive reality to understand that for different people, that means different things.

And even different Christians are going to say that their Christian faith motivates them politically in different ways.

And I think that, you know, you asked about sort of bridging gaps and understanding, and I think that that might be an important piece of that.

- Right.

- Yeah, so here's what I would say.

I mean, our discussion in this segment kind of kicked off with the clip from my wife, Katharine Hayhoe.

And I would say, I mean, she was talking about climate change and mitigating climate change.

And so what I would say is if we had a time machine and we went back to the Apostle Paul and the Apostle Peter, you can't imagine Peter walking up to Paul and saying, "You know, Paul, I believe the Earth is heating up a few degrees every century," and Paul says, "No way, you believe that?

Well, we can't even work together anymore."

I mean, the idea that thermometers show something about the data over decades and centuries, either that's true or it's not, it doesn't matter if I'm a Christian or not a Christian, it doesn't matter if I'm Republican or Democrat, I mean, a thermometer doesn't have a political party.

It's not blue, it's not red, it's just green, you might say.

And so I think that's what we're talking about.

We're talking about parsing out facts, you know, whether it's climate change or even vaccines, which I know is a controversial issue.

Either vaccines work or they don't.

And we get to the bottom of that and hopefully we see the facts and figures and we say, "Yes, I'm going with those."

"I'm not going with something somebody told me in some meeting somewhere, I'm going with the data."

But then, you know, after we talk about climate change and vaccines as prime examples, because there's data and science involved, then we go over to some of these social issues that you're now bringing up.

And, you know, I think the Moral Majority and their opinion on social issues, I mean, we're going to have to say they're allowed to exist, they're allowed to have their opinions, they're allowed to vote at the voting booth.

And if they outnumber a group, then that group's going to be disappointed.

But in America, we can't say, "Well, they believe homosexuality is wrong, so we should demonize them."

They believe that my lifestyle is not okay with them, so therefore they're not okay with me.

I mean, apparently in America, we're allowed to have freedom of speech and opinions.

And I just think that some of this, it's almost like we're saying, "Let's be tolerant of everybody, except some Christians."

- Sarah, is that the way you feel?

- I think that clearly these social issues are extremely contested.

There are issues that people have strong emotions about, and politicians understand that.

I mean, we saw in the 2024 election, a lot of emphasis in a lot of ad spending around LGBTQ and particularly transgender issues by Republicans in a way that I think clearly was effective.

And so, you know, I think it's difficult sometimes to, in the public sphere, have a, you know, a nuanced conversation about some of those policies, I think, and that's just one example.

But I think as our country becomes more diverse and more complex, the intersection of religion and politics is also becoming more complex.

- Okay, let me ask you one last question, Sarah.

David French from the "New York Times" talked about the fact that he was really shocked by the fact that some of the evangelical activists he knew wanted political power, that's been clear from the days of Reverend Falwell, because they would get the policy they wanted.

Now, they're in power, but they're not really reverting to their Christian theology and values and practices.

Is it all about power?

Is it all about pragmatism?

- I think politics is about, is a vehicle, a nonviolent vehicle through which people can, you might say, impose or infuse their values into the larger society.

And for that reason, I think these issues will always be heated, they will always be contested.

There will always be questions about who is truly a Christian, what should a Christian believe about the social and cultural issues, about issues like immigration?

- Right!

- What does Christian compassion actually look like?

It continues to be a fascinating conversation, and a challenging one for us as a society.

But I think this is why I'm drawn to these questions as a journalist in my reporting, because people are answering them in very different ways.

I'm just fascinated to see how Americans sort through these issues going forward.

- The two of you have been absolutely compelling.

So thank you.

Your points of view have been extremely enlightening, and we're very grateful you took so much time to be with us today.

Now, we welcome Russell Moore.

He's the Editor in Chief of "Christianity Today."

He's also a preacher and an ethicist.

Russell, we're delighted to have you with us.

I've wanted you on this broadcast for a long time.

- Well, thank you for me.

- A pleasure.

You say that American evangelicalism is in crisis, and at that point, there's only one way out.

What's the way out?

- Well, I think the way out starts with recognizing the crisis, which is we no longer have a sense or an identity of what evangelicalism actually is, apart from a political movement or a cultural movement.

And I think recognizing the depth of that is where we have to start.

Because I think there are a lot of people who assume, well, something will happen and everything will just reset to the way it was in some imagined past.

That's not going to happen, it's really going to take evangelicals ourselves grappling with our own crisis of identity and the fact that we're living in very different times.

- Looking at the country right now, we know people are angry, we know people are disenfranchised, we know there's a mental health epidemic, and a loneliness epidemic.

But we also seem to see a cruelty epidemic of demonizing and vilifying vulnerable populations.

Again, when we're taught, or when Christians are taught, to love your enemies, how disturbed are you to see what's going on in the country?

- I'm very disturbed, and I think it's symptomatic.

If I had to boil down the central nub of all of these crises we're seeing, I would probably say boredom.

I think there's something that anger, polarization, fear, cruelty, all of these things, it seems to provide to people, which is a kind of jolt to the nervous system.

And so you have this sense of kind of an illusion of life that people can have by being in ongoing war with their enemies, or by creating these imagined identities online, having grievance, exercising some sort of what we perceive to be punishment of those who are not like us.

I think it gives people an illusory feeling of life, and has nothing more to do with actual life than, say, pornography does to intimacy.

It's a cheap imitation and it doesn't work.

- You're chalking this up to an adrenaline rush.

Let me give you two examples, okay?

- Mm-hmm!

- So the white smoke signaling the ascension of Pope Leo, still out there.

And social media is blasting his far-left ideas on immigration, on LGBTQ people.

They're reposting his far-left tweet that we should hear more from church leaders to reject racism and seek justice.

Why is that a far left tweet?

- Well, that's part of the ridiculous nature of the time we're in right now, is that first of all, that all of these categories are sorted out into right and left political categories, as though every part of life can be labeled into red and blue.

That's a really reductionistic, very momentary, very American way of seeing things.

But secondly, because there is this distance from the ethics of Jesus Himself, where compassion and mercy and justice, all these things, seem to be left-coded.

That doesn't tell us anything about those virtues, it tells us about just how sick our moment is.

- Or, here's the more venal of the examples, what happened in Springfield, Ohio.

People in Springfield, this is based on a lie, were accused of eating pets, their pets.

And it went viral, it went super viral.

Talk about that for a minute.

- Well, I do think there is an ultimate accounting and a judgment for that kind of lying against a vulnerable and helpless, in this case, population, who didn't have the power to correct what's going on about them by political leaders and on media and social media and other places.

I think one of the problems here is a cynicism that assumes that a a lie can be told and people will simply a adapt to that lie in order to be part of the tribe.

- Right.

- That goes back, again, that can only work, it comes from a cynical motive, but it can only work with people who are disconnected, isolated, and fragmented.

- You know, there are algorithms that perpetuate negativity, there are algorithms that perpetuate exactly what you're talking about.

My question to you, do these folks not know the hatred and the vitriol that they're spreading?

Do they not know that as Christians?

- I think one of the problems is we're living in this illusory sort of ecosystem where we don't take seriously the consequences of what we say and what we do.

And not just the consequences for other people, I think we're not aware of what's happening to our own consciences and psyches and our own souls with this kind of behavior.

So there's a sort of, "Well, we're just arguing online.

We're just talking online."

That has real world consequences for these vulnerable populations when their children are being accused of eating pets, for instance.

It also though, has a hardening effect on the people who are doing it.

- Has this put people off from coming back to the church?

I mean, it's hard to sort of justify all the different numbers you see in terms of, you know, people are joining, people are leaving, young people are joining and they're leaving.

Well, what are you seeing in terms of membership?

- One of the things that I'm seeing is that there is a sorting out right now, where it's very difficult to find purplish churches.

Some of them do exist where you have different kinds of political viewpoints within that same congregation.

But usually not, usually right now, you have divisions, not just between kind of more politically conservative and more politically moderate or progressive congregations, but also differences between congregations that want politics to be central, and congregations that reject the ultimacy of that kind of political identity.

And that's sorting out, that's one of the reasons why you don't have the same kinds of tensions that we had in, for instance, 2016.

- Right.

- Where congregations were shocked to find, "I can't believe that I'm in the same church with people who don't see things the same way I do."

That's rarer now.

- It is.

- I don't think that's a necessarily a good thing, because what it means is that just like every other aspect of American life, we're kind of dividing up into our silos and into our cultural tribes.

I don't think that's a good thing.

- Okay, but the momentum, arguably is with the religious right, with the folks who are taking up all the oxygen in the room right now who have hitched their hopes, I guess, to politics.

- I don't think the momentum is with the religious right.

I think the momentum is with a post-religious, very secularized kind of right.

If you look at, for instance, the issues that are most motivating right now with the right around the world, they aren't traditionally moral categories.

They're ethnic identity, resentment of immigrants, those are the kinds of things that actually charge people up.

That's a very different kind of political movement than what we've seen with some religious movements before.

- Okay, but you have a White House, for example, that's beefed up its presence of religious counselors and advisors and they've made a big show of prayer breakfast and they're out and about and stuff.

Is that not sort of buttressing the religious right?

- Well, I think a lot of that is identity politics.

I mean, if you look at, for instance, in 2016, Mike Pence, and in the first Trump administration, Mike Pence was a really important figure because he was a genuine evangelical Christian, with genuine theological and moral commitments.

- Right!

- I don't think the White House thinks they need that now.

- So another factor that's been discussed by "The Guardian," a paper, as you know in the UK, is the entry of hucksterism, the commercialism into this whole picture, as part of, you know, again, that changes the truth of the ideology, so to speak, what do you think about that?

- Well, I think that everything has a shadow side, and every strength has a dangerous shadow side.

And this is one of them for evangelicalism.

One of the best things about evangelicalism is an entrepreneurial sort of ability to spread the gospel and build churches without institutional permission.

The shadow side of that is that it can easily become market driven.

And once you have a market-driven kind of religion, you have what "The Guardian" talks about, often a market-driven approach to truth itself.

But that does mean that we have to say, how do we make sure that we create institutions and people who actually do have integrity that's not simply a means to some political end?

- Does any of this ever make you angry?

- Yes, it makes me very angry.

But I'm not angry without a kind of hope.

I mean, I really do believe that we can look back in history and see moments that seem despairing, where suddenly out of nowhere, there comes some new movement of God.

I was once really angry and despairing when I was very young.

I was talking to an elderly evangelical figure who formerly Editor in Chief at "Christianity Today."

And I said, "Do you see any hope for the evangelical movement?"

And he said, "Well, what you're forgetting is that the people who emerged to lead the evangelical movement usually come out of nowhere."

C. S. Lewis was an atheist at Oxford, and became the great apologist of the 20th century.

Chuck Colson was a political hatchet man in prison, and became the leader of prison reform efforts, and so forth.

And so that's not an uncommon thing.

So I am angry in many moments, but I have hope.

- What's the first step out of this, do you think?

I mean, what could we do, proactively?

- Usually when people say, "What do we do?"

what they want is a five, six, or seven-step program.

And I actually think that's not the answer, that's the problem.

- Uh-huh!

- I think we actually have to come to a point of perplexity of saying, we really don't know how to program ourselves or succeed ourselves out of this problem.

I think we do have to have a time of recognizing some of the paths that we have taken have led us to some dark places.

We need to stop and pray and look for other paths.

- Two more quick questions for you.

One of them has to do with a theology that would be guided by, and I think I got this quote from you, Thomas Merton, that "A theology that ends in lovelessness cannot be Christian."

Is it that simple?

- I do think it's that simple.

I think we do have to recognize that whatever is leading us to be more anxious, more crueler, more isolated from one another, is not the direction Jesus set us on.

And so that takes some reconsideration.

- Here's the last question.

I happened to look at a family photo of your gorgeous family.

You have five boys- - Right!

- Varying ages.

When they have their own grandchildren, think ahead, what do you hope that evangelicalism looks like?

- I hope that evangelicalism looks really strange in the way that it was strange in the first century.

So you see an outside culture that says not only are these people really weird in the fact that they believe such things that we can't imagine, that dead man came back to life.

But we also can't believe how much they love each other and how much they're engaged in a brighter, more hopeful, more Christ-anchored and Christ-reflecting sort of mission.

- Russell Moore, you were worth the wait.

- Thank you.

- We're grateful to our guests for their insights and inspiration, and to you for joining us today.

Until we see you back here next time, from the other Washington, Washington, Connecticut, I'm Jane Whitney, take care.

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