Recorded live on Substack the Friday before Election Day, with two friends who host shows of their own: Lori Adams-Brown of A World of Difference and Will Chan Wright of Faithful Politics. We get into why candidates like James Talarico and Adam Hamilton have their faith questioned, why a handful of issues soak up so much of the church’s moral attention, and how Christians are doing on empathy. Then come the risky predictions: the House, a Senate lightning round, and whether the polls can be trusted. To close, we ask whether there’s a path forward for the church in America.

Calls to Action

✅ Rate and review the show: lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion

✅ Subscribe on Substack: coreysnathan.substack.com

✅ Watch on YouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligion

✅ Know someone who’s been told their faith doesn’t count because of how they vote? Send them this one.

About Our Guests

Lori Adams-Brown is a business and nonprofit executive and host of A World of Difference, a podcast about how our differences make us stronger. She grew up in Central and South America, worked in Indonesia and Singapore, and now leads in Silicon Valley tech.

Will Chan Wright is a U.S. Army veteran and co-host of Faithful Politics. For six years, he and Pastor Josh Burtram, a conservative, have shown that a progressive and a conservative Christian can talk faith and politics together.

Links and Resources

• Lori on Substack: loriadamsbrown.substack.com

• A World of Difference: aworldofdifferencepodcast.com

• Faithful Politics: faithfulpolitics.us

Connect with Talkin’ Politics & Religion Without Killin’ Each Other

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• YouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligion

• Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, X, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn: @coreysnathan

Partners

Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

“In toxic systems, the person who names the problem becomes the problem.” (Lori Adams-Brown)

Now go talk some politics and religion with gentleness and respect.

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is back, and this time we did it live on Substack, a few days before the midterms. We start in Apartment A1 in Manassas, where a tiny eight-year-old got locked out of the house and threw his first punch. From there it’s the Air Force, the NSA, Congress, the January 6th Committee, and a distillery in the Blue Ridge Mountains where he says Trump voters tell him things over bourbon that they’d never say to a pollster. Then it gets personal: his mom, the friends who told him he was dead to them, and what it’ll take to build a bridge back.

Calls to Action

✅ Leave us a rating or review: lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion

✅ Subscribe on Substack: coreysnathan.substack.com

✅ Subscribe on YouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligion

✅ Send this one to the person you’ve been meaning to call

About Our Guest

Denver Riggleman represented Virginia’s 5th District in Congress from 2019 to 2021 and later served as an adviser to the House Select Committee on the January 6th Attack. Before that, he was an Air Force intelligence officer who worked with the NSA and helped plan the first strikes in Afghanistan after 9/11. He’s the author of The Breach (with Hunter Walker). He and his wife Christine, the real master distiller, run Silverback Distillery in Afton, Virginia, and East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. Married 37 years and counting.

Links and Resources

• Denver’s Substack: substack.com/@denverriggleman

• Denver on YouTube: www.youtube.com/@thebreachmedia

• Denver on Bluesky: @denverriggleman

• Denver on X: @Denver4VA

• Silverback Distillery: www.sbdistillery.com

Connect with Talkin’ Politics & Religion Without Killin’ Each Other

• Substack: coreysnathan.substack.com

• YouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligion

• Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, X, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn: @coreysnathan

Partners

Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

“As much as I hate bullies, I don’t like being one.” Denver Riggleman

Now go talk some politics and religion with gentleness and respect.

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of The Dispatch joins Corey to talk about growing up in Lubbock, learning to write from Tom Wolfe and the back pages of National Review, and why his reporting method amounts to “send Kevin someplace he doesn’t belong.” Fresh off a week in the Rio Grande Valley and elsewhere in Texas covering the midterms, Kevin explains why Texas Democrats are courting a new constituency: normal people. Then the conversation turns to impeachment, corruption, Catholic and evangelical America, and why your politics shouldn’t be your religion.

Calls to Action

✅ Rate and review the show: lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion

✅ Subscribe on Substack: coreysnathan.substack.com

✅ Watch on YouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligion

✅ Share this episode with a friend who treats politics like a religion

Key Takeaways

• Texas Democrats changed their slate. Outside of James Talarico, the party nominated boots-and-cowboy-hat Tejano candidates who talk about healthcare and gas prices instead of identity politics.

• Corruption is becoming a kitchen-table issue. Kevin argues voters connect $6 diesel to the grifting they see from people in power, and it’s showing up in the polls.

• Impeachment depends on the Senate. If Democrats win the Senate, Kevin expects impeachment plus a long run of oversight investigations, which he calls how the constitutional system is supposed to work.

• Politics has replaced church for a lot of people. Bitter political tribalism has grown as participation in religious life has declined. If politics is your religion, Kevin says, you should try to fix that about yourself.

About Our Guest

Kevin D. Williamson is national correspondent at The Dispatch, where he writes the Monday newsletter Wanderland. He spent 15 years as a writer and editor at National Review, served as theater critic for The New Criterion, and is writer in residence at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. His books include The Smallest Minority: Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics among several others.

Links and Resources

• thedispatch.com

• Bordering on Sanity, Kevin D. Williamson, The Dispatch: thedispatch.com/newsletter/wanderland/texas-democratic-candidates-midterms-talarico-normal

• Wanderland newsletter: thedispatch.com/newsletter/wanderland

Connect with Talkin’ Politics & Religion Without Killin’ Each Other

• Substack: coreysnathan.substack.com

• YouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligion

• Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, X, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn: @coreysnathan

Partners

Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

“If Christians believed their own dogma, the world would look different from the way it looks.” Now go talk some politics and religion with gentleness and respect.

Corey sits down with , senior elections analyst at Silver Bulletin, to look under the hood of the midterm forecast. They cover how polls get weighted, why a four-point lead can mean a 90% chance to win, and go state by state through the Senate map, from Texas and Maine to Kansas and Nebraska.

Calls to Action

✅ Leave a rating and review: lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion

✅ Subscribe on Substack: coreysnathan.substack.com

✅ Watch and subscribe on YouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligion

✅ Share this episode with the friend who says the polls are always wrong

Key Takeaways

- Polls are snapshots, forecasts are probabilities. A poll captures opinion at one moment. The model combines polls with fundamentals and simulates the election many times.

- Not every poll counts the same. Silver Bulletin weights pollsters by track record, recency, and transparency, and adjusts for partisan house effects.

- The Labor Day shift was real. Once pollsters moved to likely voter models, the generic ballot went from about D+6 to D+9, reflecting Democrats’ recent turnout edge.

- Candidates still matter. Maine is competitive mainly because of Susan Collins, and Ken Paxton’s weaknesses help explain why Texas leans toward Talarico.

- Try to understand why people believe what they do. Eli’s advice is to separate someone’s politics from how you feel about them as a person, and to bring some intellectual humility.

About Our Guest

Eli McKown-Dawson is a senior elections analyst at Silver Bulletin, where he writes about polls, politics, and elections and develops polling averages and election forecasts. He previously contributed to YouGov’s U.S. politics team.

Links and Resources

• Silver Bulletin: www.natesilver.net

• Eli on X: @emckowndawson

• Votebeat, “Experts say the midterms could face challenges, but are less concerned than in the spring”: www.votebeat.org/national/2026/10/15/fall-2026-election-expert-survey-troops-polls-seize-ballots-voting-fraud/

Connect with TRP&R

• Substack: coreysnathan.substack.com

• YouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligion

• Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, X, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn: @coreysnathan

Partners

Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

“One in four chances happen all the time.” – Eli McKown-Dawson

Now go talk some politics and religion with gentleness and respect.

Pat Kahnke cast his first vote for Ronald Reagan, spoke on behalf of the pro-life movement, and picked his church because he walked in on Pro-Life Sunday. Then 2016 sent him back to rethink all of it. In this Substack Live conversation, Corey and Pat talk about why the “binary choice” argument falls apart in the primaries, what “if love is obedience” says about authoritarian faith, the Somali community and the ICE occupation in Minnesota, and Pete Hegseth’s push to livestream an execution.

Calls to Action

✅ Leave a rating and review: lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion

✅ Subscribe on Substack: coreysnathan.substack.com

✅ Watch and subscribe on YouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligion

✅ Share this episode with someone who’s been told voting is a binary choice

Key Takeaways

Disillusionment can be a gift. Pat has lost his illusions about the movement he came from, about the average voter and even about Minnesota. Seeing what actually is helps him get past most of the anger and try to be useful.

The binary choice is a myth. White evangelicals chose Trump over every other Republican in the primaries. Pat says that blows the “lesser of two evils” excuse out of the water.

Earned authority vs. positional authority. Pat’s biggest fights with his own church elders were over whether authority is owed or earned. He sees an authoritarian kind of Christian who will back anyone willing to exercise power over the people they fear.

Pick one issue. Instead of arguing with friends and family about everything, Pat suggests learning one issue well and discussing it calmly, with facts. For him, that issue is immigration.

About Our Guest

Pat Kahnke is a retired evangelical pastor who spent 20 years in ministry in the Twin Cities, including a church he planted in St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood. He’s the author of MAGA Seduction: Resisting the Debasement of the Christian Conscience (2020) and A Christian Case Against Donald Trump (2024), and he hosts Culture, Faith, and Politics on YouTube and Substack.

Links and Resources

• Culture, Faith, and Politics on Substack: culturefaithandpolitics.substack.com

• Culture, Faith, and Politics on YouTube: www.youtube.com/@culturefaithandpolitics

• “Religious Groups Differ Widely in Their 2026 Midterm Preferences” (Pew Research Center): www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/10/13/religious-groups-differ-widely-in-their-2026-midterm-preferences/

Connect with Talkin’ Politics & Religion Without Killin’ Each Other

• Substack: coreysnathan.substack.com

• YouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligion

• Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, X, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn: @coreysnathan

Partners

Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

“Find something that you care passionately about.” Now go talk some politics and religion with gentleness and respect.

Get more from Corey Nathan in the Substack app

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Quick heads up: Around 17:15, we had some technical difficulties. So please hop over to Part 2 to listen in on the rest of it.

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Thank you , , and many others for tuning into my live video with ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

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She was ready for the question. Borrowing a line from a local city councilman, AOC said, “Woke 1 was crazy.” And then the laugh.

That damn laugh. Did she just laugh away an entire era?

Not that we need to relitigate every grievance from 2020. But some of the excesses AOC was laughing off actually cost people. They cost relationships and careers, goodwill and even political support. And they left many of us questioning whether the self-appointed authorities enforcing this new set of mores should be blindly obeyed or could even be fully trusted.

Cultural questions that many progressives treated as settled were anything but settled among the broader populace. And, I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but we have another midterm upon us, and then the presidential campaign not far behind. Shrugging off “Woke 1” with a chuckle risks missing some important questions: What the hell happened, what did it cost, and did we learn anything from it?

So that laugh? Sorry. This will not do.

How About Those Trader Joe’s Cards?

It was June of 2020. Our industry, like most others, came to a standstill. None of us had a playbook for a worldwide pandemic. So I rallied a number of friends from our corner of the business to start a non-profit organization.

The mission was simply to help others in the community who were getting hit hard. So many had already been laid off, furloughed, or asked to take deep cuts to keep their employers afloat. We were raising money so that we could hand out Trader Joe’s cards to folks who lost their jobs. We also put work stations together for those who didn’t have the resources to build out their home offices. Stuff like that.

We reached out to a number of industry leaders, many of whom were eager to help. But the response of some others was startling. My “whiteness” was mentioned more than once. As was my gender and privilege. I wasn’t sure what any of that had to do with helping our friends in the industry.

One longtime friend called, worried that within weeks he’d be “living under a bridge,” as he put it.

At the same time, after George Floyd was killed, our new organization was being pressured to include diversity and inclusion initiatives. Okay, I thought. It wasn’t my area of expertise. But it seemed to be responsive to the pain many of our friends were describing. So we asked those with more experience in this work for their help too.

Big mistake.

That’s where my “whiteness” and “privilege” disqualified me, I guess. Some found my mere participation to be an intolerable offense.

Fine. So we’re not doing the DEI thing? How about those Trader Joe’s cards? Did I have the acceptable body parts and level of melanin to help folks buy groceries?

Suddenly, I had friends and colleagues identifying me primarily by certain data points. I was no longer the guy they used to go to Jerry’s Deli with. Or the one who helped them land their current job. I was now: Privileged. Straight. White. GenX. Man.

We were talking about wrangling a refurbished Mac for a production artist who got laid off. So, how about I perform some sort of ritual flagellation before every meeting? Now can we get to work?

Despite all that, I knew I had blind spots. There were some aspects of this country’s history I hadn’t studied. There were also individuals’ stories and experiences I wasn’t privy to. The most challenging part was often around language. It seemed like there were standards I wasn’t cool enough to have already known – what words needed to be used and which ones were forbidden.

Somewhere in that same stretch, I asked the board of our new organization whether we might observe Juneteenth and, if so, how. One of the board members quit in response. I still don’t know if I shouldn’t have asked, if it was one of those things I was supposed to already know, or if there was something else going on entirely.

The Most Convenient Definitions

We were all still in lockdowns. Remember those? All three of my teenage kids were home. They pretty much had to be. Given that by then we walked every conceivable route, ruined an inconceivable number of sourdough starters, and figured we couldn’t drink our way through it, we decided the kids were ready for an initiation of sorts.

They were about the age we were when The Breakfast Club came out. It might’ve been the first movie we all sat through together that wasn’t a Pixar movie or Star Wars Chapter Twenty-twelve the Pre-prequel or something like that. No, this was “Don’t You (Forget About Me).” Their mom and I didn’t. And now our kids would get to see why. Then we got to the end:

BRIAN: You see us as you want to see us: in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain…

ANDY: …and an athlete…

ALLISON: …and a basketcase…

CLAIRE: …a princess…

JOHN: …and a criminal.

BRIAN: Does that answer your question?

At which point our eldest practically jumped off the couch and shouted, “PERIOD!!!” (GenZ’s answer to a GenXer’s “like, TOTALLY!”)

It was right around that time when Dana called.

Dana and I knew each other from when we were both just getting started. She was one of the bigwigs now. But she wasn’t calling about our non-profit, the Alliance. She was calling about Trailer Geeks and Teaser Gods, a podcast I was hosting about the history of our corner of the industry. Trailer Geeks and the Alliance were intertwined; we talked about the Alliance’s work on the show constantly.

“Corey! We can do better!” Dana said. To which I agreed, “Yes, Dana, we can... What are we talking about?”

We were talking, it turned out, about “a whole lotta old white dudes.” Part of the problem was simply that the industry itself, going back to the late ‘60s and ‘70s, was populated almost entirely by white men. I’d worked hard to feature women on the show. I’d also worked hard to have Black and brown voices on. But a lot of the folks I was reaching out to wouldn’t reply to my emails or take my calls.

But they would take Dana’s. It was one thing to give some constructive feedback. It was another to get in the trenches with me and do the work. And that’s what she did. Dana allowed me to stand alongside her. She did the work I couldn’t. She came on the show and talked very directly about some of these issues. She also helped me program a series of episodes highlighting Michelle and Des and Kelly and others who were so important to hear from.

One of the notes that came in after Dana’s episode aired was from a student at a nearby community college. She didn’t tell me much about her background, but she did say she was a single mom. She had been listening to the show because she really wanted to break into the creative advertising industry. Listening to our prior guests was helpful. But hearing Dana’s story – now she could picture herself actually “doing this thing.” There was a place in this world for her, as she put it.

Later that same year, another critique arrived – this one from a lady who subsequently became a dear friend. Helen wrote me a very direct letter laying out where she felt the show was falling short. Her main concern was that we weren’t featuring enough younger contributors or people with a wider range of backgrounds, including LGBTQ folks. Having had such a productive experience with Dana, I asked Helen if she’d be willing to be a co-producer and co-host. With trepidation, she accepted. And Helen and I ended up working together through a good chunk of 2021.

I found these collaborations with wonderful people like Dana and Helen to be inspiring, refreshing, and informative in important ways. And yet, in most other forums, mentions of my “whiteness,” gender, and “privilege” didn’t fade once a new president was elected. The dictum that “people like me” just sit and listen — in other words, shut the hell up — was asserted so frequently, it could have been made into an emoji.

Something About Connection

Later in 2021, Netflix released Dave Chappelle’s special titled The Closer. People in the LGBTQ community were among Chappelle’s numerous subjects in that routine. I had friends and colleagues who worked at Netflix — some of whom were involved in our nonprofit. After The Closer was released, a number of them participated in employee walkouts to protest their company’s platforming of such material.

It was worth working through the complexities of the issue, including Chappelle’s right to free expression, how his material was landing with some of the people he was talking about, Netflix’s right to platform him, and my friends’ rights to protest. At the time, I noted that there were “shocking, even offensive moments. But I’ve also been shocked by works of art by Goya and Coltrane.”

That comment was met with a great deal of pushback. Some people I considered good friends still haven’t spoken to me. There are industry events and gatherings that I’m no longer invited to. The most prominent voices in our part of the business had congealed around an acceptable way to talk about Chappelle’s work. My thoughts were deemed unacceptable.

It was Helen who attacked me most aggressively. Coming from someone I had come to care about and respect, that one hurt.

It took a few months, but Helen and I eventually got together. We both needed a little time to simmer down. But it wasn’t so long that the wounds developed into callouses. She brought me to one of her favorite Korean BBQ places. We talked about why Helen felt so fiercely protective of our LGBTQ friends. She gave me space to lay out why supporting each other’s rights matters most when we disagree. Because we didn’t come to some sort of agreement. We just heard each other.

Then Helen taught me about some of her own culture’s customs. Pouring each other’s soju with two hands, holding the bottle with the right hand and lightly touching the right arm with the left. Keeping eye contact during the toast. There was something about connection. Face to face, looking into each other’s eyes, human connection.

Dog Pile on a Rabbit

Around this same time, I was also new to another world: podcasting. I wasn’t coming to it with any sort of professional credibility. I was the newcomer, looking to see if there was a place in it for me.

Podcasting was like my “Second Mountain,” as David Brooks would put it. One of the shows I launched, Talkin’ Politics & Religion Without Killin’ Each Other, was landing some great guests including Brooks as well as David French, Danielle Allen, Wajahat Ali, Christie Todd Whitman, and Lisa Sharon Harper, among so many other accomplished, interesting voices.

Knowing that booking high quality guests is a hurdle other podcasters struggle with, I decided to throw my hat in the ring with organizations such as Podcast Movement and Podfest when they put out calls for speakers. Not to sell anything, just to help other producers, and start to feel more a part of this new community.

But each time I got to the part of the applications where they ask about race and gender identity, I couldn’t help but wonder if my answers would be read as shorthand for: uninteresting, uncool, and unwanted. As it turned out, time after time after time, I got crickets, or a thanks-but-no-thanks. I still wonder.

In May of 2022, Daniel, a board member of the Podcast Academy, shared a post on his personal Twitter expressing his support for the leaked Supreme Court draft decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade. A number of other podcasters found his post so offensive that they petitioned to have him removed. After the requisite meetings and hearings, the Academy gave Daniel the axe.

When I said, publicly, that I was troubled by his ouster, it was like watching a dog pile on a rabbit. “I can’t even…” “I just can’t with this guy. So done.” I didn’t even know we got started. I wasn’t defending Daniel’s position on the issue so much as his right to hold it and his right to say so.

Later that year, Ben Shapiro, one of the top podcasters in the world, appeared at Podcast Movement’s annual convention. Some other podcasters expressed their disapproval of Shapiro’s presence, saying it made them feel “unsafe.” The trade association responded with a public statement apologizing to those podcasters and taking “full responsibility for the harm done by his presence.”

Ironically, all of this was justified in the name of inclusivity. But by then, I knew all too painfully what speaking up for the principles of free expression and viewpoint diversity would cost.

I haven’t been back to Podcast Movement, nor have I been active with the Podcast Academy since.

How Ya Doin’, Brother?

On the night of October 7th, some of us gathered near our City Hall to pray together, check in with each other, and provide some comfort. Nearby, there were a number of pickup trucks with young protesters circling in the parking lot waving Palestinian flags and shouting slogans like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Given the modern-day pogrom that had just occurred, given the fact that some of us had extended family members who were already missing and feared dead, given our people’s long history of enduring such atrocities? Let’s just say that kind of speech is hard – no, excruciating – to support. Especially because these particular demonstrators were straining the limits of the “peaceable” part of the right to peaceably assemble.

It’s easy to support the speech we agree with. But when we disagree – deeply – that’s when these principles are tested. Not just in a theoretical sense. Can we stay in a relationship with someone when we find ourselves on opposite sides of an issue? Even ones we’re passionate about?

Dana and Lisa Sharon Harper are the people who showed me what that looks like. It was no later than October 8th that I got a call from each of them.

Lisa and I had already been having a series of conversations about Palestinians, sometimes bringing in Palestinian academics and faith leaders. We had our differences, Lisa and I, as well as Dana and I. But both of them knew I have family in Israel. So they didn’t call to argue, or to stake out a position. They called to ask how I was doing.

“How ya doin’, brother?” And then quiet.

I don’t remember anymore which of them said it, only that they both called and they both had a similar way of checking in on me. As a friend. Friends from across the miles, and even further across the ideologies, who seemed to know what I needed even more than I did. They called. They asked. Then just listened. And cried. And embodied what Wynton Marsalis talks about: “And blues never lets tragedy have the last word.”

Being with Each Other

At the last No Kings rally, I was delighted to be in a conversation with an 87-year-old woman who was describing the day she stood on the National Mall with a quarter million of her neighbors. It was the day Dr. King riffed on his dream: that one day his four little children – and all of us – would be judged by the content of their character.

As my new friend Eloise and I were talking, a mother and daughter worked their way through the crowd handing out flyers. And there was that “river to the sea” shibboleth again, along with the words “genocide” and “apartheid” to describe what was happening in Israel. I don’t know what the flyer was actually for – another rally, another organization, some website. I just thought: get this shit out of my face. I came in solidarity with a few thousand others from our town who recognize the moment we’re in. And you want to hijack this glorious day? Yeah, I said it. Hijack.

Eloise looked at the flyer and said, “I wonder if they know I’m Jewish.” I told her that I’m Jewish too. So she looked at me and asked, “I wonder if they really know what this means,” indicating the “river to the sea” wording. And then yelled, “BUT I’M STILL HERE, BITCHES!” I kid you not. And then she crumpled up that flyer and tossed it in the trash. “And that’s where it belongs.”

So, yeah. Woke 1 was crazy. But that laugh?

Eloise’s quandary was now my own: “I wonder if they really know what this means.”

This week’s Substack Live was a first: instead of reading my Dispatch essay on the podcast the usual way, I brought it here and read it live, reacting to your comments as they came in. Also responded to some folks who commented over at The Dispatch. That mix, essay plus real conversation happening underneath it, turned into something better than either piece alone. One exchange in particular, with a commenter who pushed back hard, ended up being the most candid, revealing moment of the whole thing.

The replay’s above if you missed it live.

What’s in it

• A reading of parts of “Whatever Happened to Freehold, New Jersey?,” the essay The Dispatch published a couple weeks ago

• The story behind a few lines that got cut from the final draft

• A response to a comment that pushed back on the essay’s whole premise, and why that pushback was fair

Calls to Action

✅ Read the full essay at The Dispatch: thedispatch.com/article/freehold-new-jersey-springsteen-politics
✅ Catch the podcast version: www.politicsandreligion.us
✅ Leave a comment, especially if you disagreed with something

Next Live is TBD, but subscribe here to get notified when it happens.

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thedispatch.com/article/freehold-new-jersey-springsteen-politics

Happy to share a gift link if you’d like one. But for what it’s worth, the subscription to The Dispatch is worth every penny and then some.

We talked about Dolly Parton - he's from East Tennessee! We also covered a lot more including Appalachia, Hurricane Helene, the craft of editing, AI in journalism, faith and grief and so much more.

www.politicsandreligion.us/michael-reneau

That’s the face I made a couple Saturdays ago when a friend from high school posted something combative and the algorithm slid it to the top of my feed. No warning. Just a wall going up, with me on a side I never chose.

The new essay is out in The Fulcrum, and it went looking for the people behind the posts. Jennifer, who used to let me have her coleslaw at the Manalapan Diner. Jill, from the halls of our Hebrew School, back when there was a “we.” It leans on Robert Frost, who asked what he’d be walling in or walling out before he built the thing, and on Robert Putnam, who watched the bowling alleys empty out twenty-five years ago and told us what it would cost.

There’s also a sports bar called The Local, a menu item spelled “crispy coup,” and the gastrointestinal consequences thereof. Read it for that alone if you like.

Nobody in this one is a villain. That’s most of the point. We used to sit across from each other. Now we mostly just see each other’s posts, and the posts do a lot of presenting and not much connecting.

Read the whole thing here: [Walling In, Walling Out →]

More soon,
Corey

I’m not great at writing these posts, so cutting to the chase.

One of my favorite outlets, The Dispatch, published one of my essays today. Kind of a long one, a 15-or-so-minute read. Pour a full cup of coffee. More of a chapter than a hot take.

It’s about telling my observant Jewish family I’d become a Christian, and the 25 years of conversation, rupture, and repair since. It’s one of the most personal things I’ve written, and it cost me something to write it.

But it isn’t really just my story. It’s about something I think a lot of us are aching for: how to stay in the room with each other when the differences run deep and the temptation to just leave is strong. My dad taught me that, not by agreeing with me, but by refusing to leave the table.

The essay is, in the end, about him… and hopefully about many of us.

https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/dispatch-faith/jewish-christian-family-evangelical/

This morning The Dispatch ran my essay (Gift Link) asking whether Trump Derangement Syndrome, rightly understood, has a cure. Not the syndrome as insult. The real one. The inability to look at a man’s conduct and see it clearly.

Some of the most personal writing I’ve done. Grateful it found a home there, and grateful to Michael Reneau and the team for the care they gave it.

Link’s below (and the Gift Link’s above). Tell me where you land.

https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/dispatch-faith/maga-christianity-donald-trump/

They were like those who swing axes
in a forest of trees.
And all its carved wood
they broke down with hatchets and hammers.
They set your sanctuary on fire;
they profaned the dwelling place of your name,
bringing it down to the ground.
They said to themselves, “We will utterly subdue them”;
they burned all the meeting places of God in the land.

The invitation to my bar mitzvah began with the words, “As my father and grandfather before me…” I had my first aliyah - the honor of being called up to the Torah - in front of my family and congregation in August of 1984. Just two months prior, our shul, Congregation Sons of Israel was targeted by firebombs that were thrown by local teenagers. While our building and sanctuary were mostly spared, wounds were opened.

Then in October of that year, the same group of kids who hadn’t been identified at that point, hotwired a bulldozer and rammed it into the side of our neighboring synagogue, Temple Beth Shalom, and spray painted swastikas and hateful antisemitic slogans like “Jews go home” across the walls.

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This was a time when many of us kids had grandparents that were still alive. Grandparents who survived the pogroms of Eastern Europe and the Holocaust of only 40 years prior. We all heard the stories. But somehow this turned something that seemed like dark folklore into a reality that was all too close to home.

Here’s what made the experience even more impossible to reconcile. I knew one of the kids. I knew his brothers. We considered them friends. How was the kid that I knew capable of such desecration? How could that vivacious, seemingly nice young man, whose little brothers I knew from school and from Little League, whose family we would often see at Olde Silver Tavern, be our generation’s face of the Cossacks?

I’ve been thinking a lot about our shared spaces. Places we consider hallowed.

In high school, Olde Silver’s was hallowed. It might sound silly. But Silver’s had been there for about a hundred years. The running joke - which had an air of truth - was that if you ever needed to find Chief Wallace, just check the bar at Olde Silver’s. It’s where we went after every high school football game. After every wrestling match. After every graduation. And came back to for every reunion.

Until 2009. There was a fire that took that relic of a building from us. Gone was our gathering place. Gone were the peanut shells scattered about the floor. Gone was that perfect blend of Bruce, Bon Jovi, and The Four Seasons on the jukebox and the voices of our town connecting over our Jersey boys’ music.

Remember that last scene in the last episode of Cheers? Where everyone knows your name? Not exactly the same thing. But it was pretty damn close to what it was like going by the charred remains of our old meeting place.

We weren’t the only town with an Olde Silver Tavern. One zip code over in Freehold, they had Moore’s Tavern which went back to 1770. Englishtown, a stone’s throw away, had the Village Inn. That building goes back to the 1730s. It had been turned into a tavern by the time General Charles Lee used it as his headquarters during the Battle of Monmouth. And General Washington likely needed a brew as he drew up Lee’s court-martial papers in that same spot.

I’ve been to Olde Silvers and Village Inns all over this country. As soon as you walk in, you just know. 3 or 4 old guys at the bar who might as well have been there since the Revolutionary War, playing a game they made up themselves to see who buys the next round. A short order cook who grew up going to the place and knows everyone’s order before they even give it. He couldn’t make the varsity basketball team. But to him, cooking at the Peerless (or Doc’s or Olde Silver’s) is like winning states. And the waitress still says she’s the great-great granddaughter of the original proprietor. We know it’s apocryphal. But we let her have the lie. Because it’s one of the good ones that makes the place feel a little more like home for all of us.

Whenever I go to D.C., I find my way to the National Mall and over to the Lincoln Memorial. I take some time to read every word of the 2nd Inaugural on one side and the Gettysburg Address engraved on the other with the contemplative 16th President presiding, as it were, over this personal ritual. When I turn around from our American scripture, I inevitably see the faces of those who have their own Moore’s Tavern in Bloomfield, Indiana, Ashland, Oregon, Pflugerville, Texas or even from nearby Arlington, Virginia.

A couple weeks ago when I was there, visitors were restricted from going up the steps due to construction of a temporary stage. It’s the stage that was used for the press conference and face-offs for an MMA event that was then held on the lawn of the White House.

…we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

I confess, I lack the “charity for all” that Lincoln exhorted as he venerated our fallen from the North and the South. Because one has to wonder if he could have imagined an MMA face-off where his words would be memorialized. It strains to the point of idiotic absurdity the right of a people to gather. Was this what Dr. King had in mind when he improvised his immortal words, “I have a dream,” from those same steps?

Your foes have roared in the midst of your meeting place;
they set up their own signs for signs.

The crowds who cheered the spectacle staged on those steps aren’t my foes. They’re my fellow citizens. Like the ones in Nebuchadnezzar’s day who came out when the music played, when the horns, the lyre, and the harp sounded, and bowed down with everyone else to the idol he set up. The Babylonians and even the Israelites who got swept up in this ancient act of shared, communal, collective effervescence didn’t do so out of ill will. It was a sense of belonging and even harmony. The music was good. These are moments that can feel sacred. The profane often does.

After all, many of us were sold on the idea that we could “command this stone to become bread…” or at least that the price of bread was coming down. That in all the kingdoms and nations in the world, that “To you I will give all this authority and their glory…” or at least that America would be great again. And that “He will command his angels concerning you to guard you…” or at least that ICE would clean up our city streets from the scourge of “illegals.”

Some of my friends will have to bear with me for being dubious of the worship, prayer, and even a shofar blowing at the other end of the Mall during the National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise and Thanksgiving. My father and grandfather before me, and many generations of my ancestors have had to develop the discernment to know the difference between that which is holy and a huckster who fancies himself “the chosen one.” We’ve had to overcome our lament and develop the resilience for our people to survive.

We do not see our signs;
there is no longer any prophet,
and there is none among us who knows how long.
How long, O God, is the foe to scoff?

Yet we survive.

Not long after Temple Beth Shalom was desecrated, over three thousand of our friends and neighbors came to the synagogue. Not just the Jewish congregations. We had people from all different religions and no religion at all that came to the shul later that fall. Even Tom Kean, who was then the governor of New Jersey, and then Senator Frank Lautenberg joined us that day. Rabbi Rothstein led the way, and many of us joined him, by scrubbing the swastikas off the walls.

Not nearly as glitzy as the spectacle the government paid for on the National Mall last month. As Tennessee reminded us, the stage magician “gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth.” But I want truth. That’s why I’ll take those buckets of soapy water and the scouring pads that went with them anytime. That’s the work of redemption. That was the work of healing what had been broken. And not just the walls of Temple Beth Shalom.

One has to wonder what became of Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon, the Seleucid Empire of Antiochus, or Titus Caesar’s Rome. What became of their kingdom and power and glory?

Yet we survive. No longer with a Holy Temple. Not for the last 2000 years. But with our Torah. And our neighborhood synagogues. And with our buckets and steel wool.

I try never to conflate Holy Scripture with this country’s founding documents. But there’s something to be gleaned from the fact that the Jewish people remain. The survival of a people is not secured by earthly riches or military dominance. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be left to learn about the Assyrians, Babylonians, Romans, and even the Third Reich in museums as the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks pointed out. It’s certainly not to be secured by putting one’s visage on a coin or image on buildings the way Caesar did. Or with the king throwing himself a lavish birthday party the way Pharaoh did.

We’re a people of the word. And it seems Jefferson and Franklin and Adams and Madison all understood that. We refer to this nation as an experiment, that’s based on principles, not principals. On ideas, not kings. That’s how we end up with one of the most brilliant sentences ever written in the English language, a phrase that by its very existence was like the first breath proving our Constitution to be a living document:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

That Assembly Clause. The moment our other freedoms stop being private and become a body of people in a place. “The right of the people peaceably to assemble” isn’t an abstraction. It has faces.

A veteran who was annoyed by some of the signs he saw but showed up anyway because that’s what he put his life on the line for over three tours of duty. A college student and her mom who could have been doing tea or playing pickleball, but decided to exercise their First Amendment rights instead. And Eloise, an 87-year-old woman whose passion for what we can be as a country hasn’t faltered since the rallies she attended in the early 1960s.

On three occasions over the last year, millions of our fellow citizens have gathered in thousands of locations on the same day. If I’m being perfectly candid, a number of the signs on display at the No Kings rallies also induced my own involuntary eye rolls. So no, it wasn’t a foretaste of utopia.

But that veteran and that student and her mom and especially Eloise, after all her years of faithfulness to the sheet music of this American composition… as fallible and perfectly imperfect and human as these new friends are, they roused something familiar. Something that hit my nose like the Pathmark brand ammonia in our buckets in the late fall of 1984.

No long form essay this week. Just a quick update, a look at what’s on the desk, and one new thing we’re about to start that has me equal parts thrilled and terrified.

Let’s start with the terrifying part.

We’re going to take the name of our program literally. Talkin’ politics and religion. Without killin’ each other. At the pub. The divier the better.

Here’s the plan. On video, and on all the usual feeds too - including here on this platform via Substack Live. Mostly unscripted. Me sitting down with friends I actually disagree with, over a drink, in exactly the kind of meeting place I keep writing about. Not a debate. Not a gotcha. Two people who like each other and respect each other and just see the world differently, showing up anyway and buying the next round.

It’s a little terrifying, honestly, which is usually how I know something’s worth doing. First one’s coming soon. Wish me luck.

While I’ve got you, one quick favor. If Talkin’ Politics & Religion Without Killin’ Each Other has ever been worth your time, the most helpful thing you can do takes about a minute. Head over to lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion and leave a review. It’s how more folks find us. Leave one and let me know you did, and next time we’re in the same room, the drink’s on me. I’ll read a few on the air, too.

Now, what’s on the desk.

A couple of essays are out under consideration at a few publications I admire. Superstition stops me from saying much more than that. But here’s the territory each one covers.

One is called “All the Meeting Places.” It opens in the summer of my bar mitzvah, 1984, a couple months before I was called up to the Torah for the first time, when our synagogue got firebombed. Turns out it was local teenagers. That fall the same kids hotwired a bulldozer, rammed it into the side of a neighboring synagogue some of my closest friends attended, and sprayed swastikas across the walls. My grandparents’ generation was still alive then. People who had survived the pogroms and the camps. And suddenly the dark folklore they carried was happening on our streets, at the hands of kids from our schools. One of whom I knew. Whose family we thought of as friends.

From there the essay travels. From hundred-year-old taverns with peanut shells on the floor to the National Mall and the Lincoln Memorial, past something I watched get staged on those steps that’s still bugging me, toward a single question. What actually survives when a sacred place gets desecrated? Not the monument. Not the spectacle. The answer I land on is the heart of it, and it’s the part I’ll keep for the page.

The other one’s topline might trigger some folks. It’s about Trump Derangement Syndrome, though probably not the way you’d expect.

Sure, there’s a version where someone can’t hear the man’s name without coming unglued. That’s not the one I’m after. The syndrome that does the real damage is the opposite. The people who can look straight at what he says and does and somehow can’t see it for what it is. And I’ll cop to my own version too. To get at it, I borrow a line from Al-Anon, the rooms for the families of people wrestling with addiction. “Didn’t cause it. Can’t control it. Can’t cure it.” I’ve made my peace with the first two. It’s the third one I’m not ready to accept.

It isn’t theoretical for me. The spine of the piece is about three men with whom I’ve had meaningful friendships and what I’ve watched happen to each of them. The question that leaves me with isn’t really political. It’s human. What do you do when someone you deeply respect becomes someone you can’t quite reach? I don’t land on a cure. But I’m pretty sure the finger-wagging doesn’t work. What might work is a lot less satisfying. Show up. Sit across from the guy. Disagree, a lot, and still buy the next round.

Which is the whole idea behind that pub series up top. Same thing, lived.

More soon. Until then, go talk some politics and religion with gentleness and respect.

…and a gentleman caller who appears in the final scenes. He is the most realistic character in the play, being an emissary from a world of reality that we were somehow set apart from.

That was Tom Wingfield in the Tennessee Williams play The Glass Menagerie.

That play and those characters were brought to mind as I spent the morning walking around Washington, D.C., from my hotel in DuPont Circle to the Jefferson Memorial. I’ve been to the Lincoln Memorial many times. But not the Jefferson. I just couldn’t bring myself to walk past the abomination that’s been made of the Reflecting Pool… that’s been made of a number of civically sacred places in our nation’s capital.

The walk had me wondering if there’s an emissary from a world of reality that we’re still waiting for. Or whether that world is simply gone.

Tom, in his opening soliloquy, talks about what’s happening in his world and his time. “In Spain, there was revolution. Here there was only shouting and confusion. In Spain, there was Guernica. Here there were brief disturbances of labor, sometimes pretty violent, in otherwise peaceful cities such as Chicago, Cleveland, St. Louis…”

That was the 1930s, “…when the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind.” I’d ask what we’re having our fingers pressed forcibly down upon, but acres of our National Mall now boarded up and fouled with the machinery and porta potties of Trump's celebration of himself is giving me an answer I don’t want to accept.

In Tennessee’s play, Amanda was a romantic. Her romanticism betrayed her. But she was a romantic nonetheless, and her wish for a fairy tale ending was exceeded only by the wish for a “happily ever after” for her children. She talked about the gentleman callers of her youth, with the reverie of a pastor speaking of the resurrection, as proof that the ideal had once been real, and therefore could be real again. Her own beloved, Tom and Laura’s father, had fallen short. He “skipped the light fantastic,” which has its own romanticism. For Amanda, that door had closed.

But Laura's door was still open, and Amanda would choreograph everything around it. The apartment. The lighting. Laura herself. A pretension of civility and class, idealized in a South Amanda may have heard about but never quite possessed. Where it turned Tom's stomach, Laura endured it. Because it was Amanda’s dreams for her, more than Laura dared imagine for herself. It was a mother’s love for her child.

Amanda wasn’t wrong to love that way. That’s what breaks your heart about her.

Jim, Laura’s gentleman caller, had a nickname for her: Blue Roses. In a tender moment they recalled how Jim misheard her back in high school, when she said what kept her out of school. Pleurosis became something else entirely. Something that fit her better than the clinical word ever could have. Something unique. Transcendent. Cherished. That long awaited, but always expected something that we live for.

Blue roses don’t exist in nature. They’re beautiful and impossible and that’s exactly the point.

This American experiment, in the long course of human history, is something like that. Born imperfect. Named imperfectly. A fumbling attempt to say something true about human dignity and self-governance that became, against all odds, its own irreplaceable thing. Not because it was perfect. Because nothing like it had existed before.

And then there’s the limp.

“Shouting and confusion” has become the basic currency of our culture. The First Amendment. The Bill of Rights. All of it, not nibbled at the edges but struck at the root.

We know the limp. We just can’t agree on what’s causing it.

This chapter in American history, this administration, and this president is a reflection of too many of us. Our own vanity, avarice, and malice. Our lack of literacy in favor of reality TV entertainment. Polarization that pretends to be patriotism. We are the audience now, addressed by a narrator who draws the line between the huckster and the artist: “He gives you illusion with the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.”

So there I was, having traversed the Tidal Basin of the Potomac. The Jefferson Memorial is literally set apart from the city, from the other monuments. Set apart, like the Wingfields, from a world of reality. Set apart, like this memorial, from a world of desecration. Standing inside this hallowed space. Taking in the four inscriptions of our founding scribe. And this:

Almighty God hath created the mind free. All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion.

Then, having breathed in the wisdom and humility that undergirded Jefferson’s contributions to our formation, I stepped into the sunlight and began to descend the marble steps.

And there it was. Being constructed on the White House lawn. A gladiatorial arena. Not for anything civic. Not for anything shared. Bread and circuses. A Caesar's birthday celebration of himself, by himself, for himself.

That lawn where children hunt Easter eggs every spring. Where state funerals have been held and foreign dignitaries have been welcomed. Where families spread blankets on the Fourth of July and watched fireworks over the people’s house. That lawn.

Now this.

Tom ran. Crossed streets, bought drinks, spoke to the nearest stranger. Haunted by the sense that he abandoned someone who desperately needed him. More haunted still by the notion that in running, he'd become his father. Repeating the sins, the failings, the fancies of the man he needed most and resented most profoundly.

“The cities swept about me like dead leaves, leaves that were brightly colored but torn away from the branches.” I couldn’t bring myself to walk past the White House complex again. I didn’t want to see it up close. Like a corpse that you need to mourn without having to see the body.

But I did have a drink. And I spoke to a stranger. As much as I’d like to adapt the “you broke it, you bought it” sense of detachment when it comes to this country, “I am more faithful than I intended to be.”

The Record

This isn’t “oppo” research. These are facts. Documented, on-the-record, some of it on video.

In 2015, Paxton was indicted on securities fraud charges. He was accused of steering investors toward a tech company without disclosing he was earning a commission. That case dragged on for nearly nine years before ending in a pretrial agreement requiring community service and restitution.

In 2020, seven of his own senior deputies reported him to the FBI. Not political enemies. His own top staff. Their allegation: he was using the attorney general’s office to do favors for a donor and personal friend named Nate Paul, who (allegedly) paid to renovate Paxton’s home and employed a woman Paxton was having an extramarital affair with. When Paxton found out his deputies had gone to the FBI, he fired them. Four sued under the Texas Whistleblower Act, won, and Texas taxpayers covered the $6.6 million judgment. Not Paxton.

According to impeachment filings, he used burner phones, secret email accounts, and a fake Uber account under the alias “Dave P” to visit his mistress without his security detail knowing.

Then there’s the pen. A $1,000 Montblanc left behind at a courthouse security checkpoint. Video caught Paxton pocketing it. He returned it only after the sheriff’s office reviewed the footage and called him. His spokesperson called it a “simple mixup.”

A thousand dollar pen. On camera.

The Republican-controlled Texas House voted 121 to 23 to impeach him on bribery, abuse of office, and obstruction charges. But then, after Trump publicly pressured senators to let him off, the Republican-controlled Texas Senate acquitted him. His own wife filed for divorce on biblical grounds, citing infidelity.

On biblical grounds.

He is now the Republican nominee for United States Senate.

Same Standard

Before going further, it’s worth saying: this isn’t a partisan argument. I took heat last summer for opposing Prop 50 in California, the redistricting measure. I understand my left-leaning friends’ reasoning of it being time to fight fire with fire. That said, independent commissions have been healthy democratic renovations. We can’t discard them the moment the going gets tough.

A similar test is playing out in Maine. Susan Collins voted to convict Donald Trump in the second impeachment and spoke in favor of certifying the 2020 electoral college results. Those votes cost her something. That’s integrity.

Her likely Democratic challenger, Graham Platner, had a Nazi tattoo he only covered up when he decided to run for Senate. He’s made vicious comments about fellow veterans. His wife discovered he was exchanging sexually explicit messages with multiple women and disclosed it to his own campaign. He has a record that would disqualify most people from most jobs, let alone the Senate. If I were in Maine, I’d vote for Susan Collins. Yes, I want Trump’s opposition to retake the Senate in 2026. But what’s right is right.

Same standard. Regardless of party preference. Because if we really believe democracy is on the line. If we really believe basic decency is on the line, somebody’s gotta start acting like it even when politically, it seems like it’s not in one party’s short term interests. Which, by the way, also goes for my church.

And that’s what brings us back to Texas.

The Silence

James Talarico is a former teacher, an Austin-area state representative, a rising figure in the Democratic party, and, as he describes himself, a committed Christian who attends Princeton Seminary part-time while holding elected office.

This is where it gets telling. Prominent evangelical voices all over the country have had quite a bit to say about Talarico. Multiple articles, multiple commentaries, a flood of social media attacking his theological credibility, his orthodoxy, his right to even call himself a Christian — all for, as they describe it, “making the Bible say what it clearly does not.”

Meanwhile, the man impeached and divorced on biblical grounds just won the Republican nomination. Don’t hold your breath waiting for those same writers to question Ken Paxton’s Christian bona fides or wrestle with his ethical record. You won’t find it.

This is all quite revealing about what’s being measured here. It isn’t Christian character. It isn’t biblical fidelity. Those metrics aren’t being applied consistently. What’s being applied is simpler: what letter comes after their name?

The scrutiny follows the political party, not the life, not the record.

To be clear: good-faith theological disagreement with Talarico is legitimate. Some of the substantive critiques of his theology may be entirely fair — I haven’t examined all of them carefully enough to say. The issue isn’t that he’s beyond scrutiny. The issue is the asymmetry.

That’s not a theological argument. It’s a tribal one.

What They Actually Prayed

It gets more extreme than think pieces and social media.

Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, has a close spiritual adviser — a pastor who prays with him at the Pentagon and has stood at officially sanctioned prayer events where the President was described as a divinely appointed leader. This pastor recently appeared on a podcast alongside the show’s host to discuss James Talarico.

The host described Talarico as a “wolf,” a “demon,” a “snake,” and said he falls into the category of “public enemies,” people you are “not called to love.” He invoked imprecatory psalms and said: “God, destroy them. Make them as dung on the ground.”

Then: “I pray that God kills him.”

The pastor — Hegseth’s spiritual adviser — responded, “Right, right. We want him crucified with Christ.”

The host added: “And if it would not be within God’s will to do so, stop him by any means necessary.”

The host later clarified he meant spiritual death and resurrection. But “stop him by any means necessary” doesn’t leave much wiggle room for nuance. And this wasn’t a prayer meeting. It was a political hit dressed up in Christian-ese.

That’s what’s happening right now in American Christianity.

A Pastor Writes

I want to talk about this from a more personal perspective, from inside my own Christian community.

A pastor I’ve known for a long time — someone with real theological training, real pastoral experience, and real intellectual substance — wrote me recently at some length. He challenged what I’ve been writing and saying publicly. He suggested I’ve been “trimming the edges of my theological sails” to attract an audience. He suggested my emphasis on kindness, humility, and how we treat people represents an over-correction that minimizes more important matters such as homosexuality, abortion, transgenderism. He also found the “No Kings” anti-authoritarian protests logically unsound, noting correctly that the Bible contains good kings as well as bad ones.

On orthodoxy: he challenged whether someone can be a genuine Christian while making room for what he called sexual immorality. He quoted the old theological line: even the demons believe.

He’s right that creeds alone aren’t sufficient. The question is what counts as obedience, and whose interpretation gets to be definitive.

Implicit in his letter (and sometimes explicit) was the suggestion that a program like mine ought to be spending considerably more time on what I'd describe as his particular obsessions: the “gay agenda,” gender ideology, the usual list. So let’s talk about what I’ve actually addressed on that front.

We’ve discussed the Greek word arsenokoitai on the program at some length with serious scholars. It gets translated as “homosexual” in passages like 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy, and the phrase para physin in Romans 1 carries similar connotations. But in their original context, these terms described something that looks considerably more like predatory abuse — the exploitation of boys and young men by older men in positions of power — than anything my gay friends are doing in their lives and relationships. That’s not a liberal reframe. That’s engagement with the text, the history, and the scholarship.

Nancy French joined me to discuss the serial abominations still being covered up at Kamp Kanakuk. joined me to discuss how the Southern Baptist Convention essentially drove him out for two unforgivable sins: insisting the denomination reckon with widespread pastoral sexual abuse, and refusing to pretend Donald Trump's character didn't matter. The people praying imprecatory psalms against James Talarico are largely from the same circles that looked the other way, for decades, while the abuse of children was covered up in their own institutions.

(The irony isn't lost on me that when I suggested our church consider incorporating The After Party — a curriculum on faith and political discipleship developed by Curtis Chang, along with Russell Moore and the Frenches — it was met with resistance. Moore and the Frenches, apparently, are the divisive ones.)

Yes, these subjects have come up on our program regardless. Quite a bit, actually. Just not in the way a certain political tribe has mangled the definitions of those terms to fit their a priori preferences and prejudices.

So this pastor shouldn’t hold his breath waiting for me to do a piece on the evils of… I don’t know… Nathan Lane and RuPaul.

On the No Kings protests: he’s correct on the history and the biblical record. But that’s not the question. Millions of citizens exercised their First Amendment rights to free speech and peaceable assembly. That’s not confused logic. That’s a functioning democracy. I supported the right to peaceful protest at Stop the Steal while distinguishing it from what subsequently happened at the Capitol on January 6th. The same principle applies to No Kings. At least it should. The signs might be objectionable. But the right to carry them should be celebrated.

What I find truly disappointing — and I mean disappointing in the way you feel it about people you actually respect — is watching otherwise smart, caring, discerning people lose every one of those virtues the moment someone wears the wrong hat or there’s even a rumor they voted for the candidate with the wrong letter. Mocking. Vilifying. Deflecting. Very rarely finding the integrity to say: I disagree with the sign. I support the right.

Let’s face it. That’s just tribalism.

The Data

We are in a moment when religion is becoming more visible in public life, not less. The latest Pew data shows the share of Americans who think religion is gaining influence has hit its highest point since 2002. Most Americans have a positive view of religion’s role in society.

But the same survey shows nearly eight in ten Americans say churches should not endorse political candidates. Two thirds say houses of worship should stay out of day-to-day political matters. More than half say conservative Christians have gone too far in pushing their values into government and public schools.

The picture isn’t “religion in retreat.” It’s: people are open to religion’s influence in their lives, yet deeply uneasy about what they’re watching it become in the political arena. Paxton v. Talarico is a pretty vivid illustration of exactly why.

When I point to the failures of love and humility — the way people who claim the name of Christ are treating neighbors they disagree with — I am not minimizing obedience. I am insisting that love is obedience. That humility is obedience. That these are not the soft, optional parts of the faith you set aside while attending to the serious theological business of condemning your neighbors.

Years ago, a friend of mine named L.T. Jeyachandran said something I never forgot. L.T. is an IIT-trained structural engineer from India who spent the second half of his life studying Hebrew and Greek, preaching the Gospel across multiple continents. Not exactly a theological lightweight. And I was grappling out loud with him about something very similar to what I’m describing here: the way the list of things you have to believe, say, and signal just to be accepted in certain American church circles kept getting longer and more specific, and how little of it seemed to square with what I was reading in the Bible.

L.T. thought for a moment, the way a wise counselor gently bears with a restless student: the list of imperatives you actually hear from Jesus is very short. But the one that is hard to get around is “that you love one another.”

That’s it. From a man who knows the text in its original languages.

This pastor accused me of gaining an audience by shaving theological edges. You want to know what gaining an audience actually looks like? Fear and anger, served hot, three hours a day. Telling people there are monsters coming for their children, their country, their faith, their DOGS! Conflict entrepreneurship. There are people he and I both know who’ve built national platforms on exactly that model.

What I’m doing is harder. Selling broccoli and cauliflower while the crack dealers are getting rich. The conflict entrepreneurs aren’t just profiting from anger; they’re building up the scar tissue that makes it harder to see people on the supposed “other side” as actual human beings. That’s a profitable business. This isn’t.

Refusing to do that — refusing to turn your neighbors into caricatures — that’s what Talkin’ Politics & Religion Without Killin’ Each Other exists to push back against.

Watch Texas

The Texas Senate race is going to be a test case. Christian leaders all over the country are going to have to decide what to do with Ken Paxton. A man impeached by his own party. A man divorced on biblical grounds. A man who, by any honest reading of the criteria such leaders apply to their opponents, should raise serious questions about Christian character — or basic decency — and fitness for office.

Some will find the integrity to say so. Most won’t. Most will find a way — probably around abortion, or the “gay agenda,” or some other boogeyman — to make peace with the R and ignore the rest.

And when that happens, we’ll know something important. The theological arguments were never really theological. They were tribal. The D and the R were always the whole ballgame.

But when the scrutiny falls with ferocious intensity on the Democrat and complete indifference toward the Republican — when the imprecatory psalms rain down on the seminary student and the man impeached for bribery gets the endorsement and the cheers — that’s not theology.

That’s idolatry.

That's a serious word, I know. But it's the right one.

Watch Texas. You’ll see exactly what I mean.