[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome to the convocation unscripted where religion, culture, and politics intersect in real time.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm one of your hosts, Jamar Tisbee, joined by Kristen Dumay.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hey Jamar, good to see you again.

[SPEAKER_03]: and Robby Jones.

[SPEAKER_03]: Age Marm, and in absentia is Diana Butler Bass.

[SPEAKER_03]: Of course, by now you know, we're scholars, three historians, and a sociologist, we explore how religion shapes America's past and present, but of course we're responding in real time.

[SPEAKER_03]: To the events of the day, there's no prep, no scripts, just raw, unfiltered conversation, and that's why we call it, the convocation.

[SPEAKER_03]: unscripted.

[SPEAKER_03]: This episode is officially in session.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm still kind of glowing because as we record this, it's within a week of us seeing each other in person and our last episode that we got to record all together in the same room in person.

[SPEAKER_03]: That was such a good time.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it was great.

[SPEAKER_04]: Have you guys at our new offices?

[SPEAKER_04]: And they see.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's fun.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know what, I'd forgotten too because on Friday night, I went to a history department gathering and one of my colleagues said, what you're here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Aren't you in DC?

[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, what?

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't think I told anybody said, just heard you on the convocation and you all were in DC.

[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it was very fun to be there in person.

[SPEAKER_00]: We missed Diana.

[SPEAKER_00]: We missed her today, but you know, any chance we have to be in the same room.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's always a highlight.

[SPEAKER_04]: And as you were saying, you're actually glowing.

[SPEAKER_04]: You were pointing out to me twice in the studio there.

[SPEAKER_03]: I did.

[SPEAKER_03]: I did last week.

[SPEAKER_03]: I announced reimagining of my previous podcast.

[SPEAKER_03]: And this one is called the Justice Briefing.

[SPEAKER_03]: And along with that, I'm just using it as an excuse to get new toys, just new lighting and a different little bit different set up.

[SPEAKER_03]: So that's always fun and speaking of which like us setting up in PRIs offices for the podcast was hilarious.

[SPEAKER_03]: The lights that we had to bring in the books that we had to stack the furniture we had to move.

[SPEAKER_04]: We've only been in two weeks.

[SPEAKER_04]: We did not have a professional set up.

[SPEAKER_04]: Let's see.

[SPEAKER_04]: My desk lamp.

[SPEAKER_04]: What else do we have?

[SPEAKER_04]: My desk lamp.

[SPEAKER_04]: Melissa's desk lamp.

[SPEAKER_04]: Got in a little bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was a plan.

[SPEAKER_00]: I thought about bringing in the picture about we didn't move that.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was a little off of size, but yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think you know, I [SPEAKER_00]: It was good.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was good to tell of you there.

[SPEAKER_00]: All of all around the same table.

[SPEAKER_00]: But Jamar, could you tell us a little bit more about the justice briefing because I love this idea?

[SPEAKER_00]: So I think a lot of our listeners here are going to want to follow you over there.

[SPEAKER_03]: All right, I'm just going to go straight at it.

[SPEAKER_03]: I am sick and tired of hearing the culture worst commentary on current events.

[SPEAKER_03]: And what I envision is a counter narrative and options so that we don't particularly as people of faith only have [SPEAKER_03]: one option when it comes to interpreting the urgent issues of our day.

[SPEAKER_03]: So I've had this podcast, which is called Footnotes, it's the same title as my Substack.

[SPEAKER_03]: It started that way, but I've been sort of intermittent, it's kind of been on the back burner, I've done some other stuff.

[SPEAKER_03]: But then about three months ago, I started going live on Substack every Thursday evening.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I had no plan, [SPEAKER_03]: I love interacting with people in real time and then I did it again and again and three months later, it was a consistent thing.

[SPEAKER_03]: So the justice briefing is a way to formalize that, create a container around it.

[SPEAKER_03]: But it's a lot of fun to, but we got some new cover art, I got new head shots, we [SPEAKER_03]: recorded a trailer which is up on my Instagram and YouTube page and yeah it's going well so far.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'll go live again this evening and we'll we'll talk about next steps because it's it's actually part of something much bigger.

[SPEAKER_03]: So you can subscribe to the Justice Briefing wherever you get your podcast and if you ever want to tune in live just go to tomorrowtisb.substack.com and it'll go live again on Substack Live but it's my podcast the Justice Briefing.

[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for asking.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and let's do a link to the trailer in the show notes too because I love it.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we need to do one of those like Colbert handoffs, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: That that he used to do back in the day.

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, shoot, what's his name?

[SPEAKER_04]: He's the guy to big guy who's now who gave him his start.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's weird.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, sure.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, they used to do a handoff, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: No, the only time he's ever been called the big guy, if I don't.

[SPEAKER_04]: I know when they had the back of the show, they would do this little segment at the end.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I feel like the convocation we're now your warm up back.

[SPEAKER_04]: Just a little handoff to your to the justice briefing at the end of the show.

[SPEAKER_03]: there's absolutely room for both, but I love that idea.

[SPEAKER_03]: We're two definitely very related podcasts and just excited if our TCU listeners want yet another dose of my voice they can tune in to the Justice Briefing.

[SPEAKER_03]: Well, speaking of briefing the people, there's a bit of news happening.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's hard to know where to start, but today what's been consuming the headlines is the president went on truth social as he is want to do and was responding to six political leaders, democratic leaders, [SPEAKER_03]: encouraging and advising military leaders not to follow illegal orders to uphold their oath to the Constitution and not bow down to Trump or any of his officials who are encouraging them or ordering them to do, acts that might be illegal.

[SPEAKER_03]: And in response, [SPEAKER_03]: Trump said, on true social, seditious behavior, all caps, punishable by death, goes on to retweet or retruth or re-social or whatever it's called.

[SPEAKER_03]: Hang them.

[SPEAKER_03]: George Washington would.

[SPEAKER_03]: President shares that and then goes on to say it's called seditious behavior at the highest level, each one of these traders to our country should be arrested and put on trial.

[SPEAKER_03]: Their words cannot be allowed to stand.

[SPEAKER_03]: We won't have a country anymore and example must be set President DJT.

[SPEAKER_03]: So, very presidential language, right, Robbie?

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, well, I mean, I started even nowhere to start with this.

[SPEAKER_04]: I do want to start with something that's just right, obviously.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I just want to keep saying it trumps, like little social network, called Truth Social, like there's nothing more in 1984-ish than the fact that he named that thing Truth Social.

[SPEAKER_04]: And did it like very intentionally, again, to kind of just subvert the very idea.

[SPEAKER_04]: of truth, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: And even calling it, I'm going to re-truth something like that's the terminology they get to use as a retreat, it's re-truth.

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, that's all just that's subversive in itself, right, to the very idea of truth and facts and things that are ascertainable, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: And even here, it's all, you know, [SPEAKER_04]: This is also was a video put out by four sitting members of Congress and two senators, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: Sitting senators, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: These are elected officials by their citizens in their state.

[SPEAKER_04]: They are also people who have a history as being either security professionals or veterans.

[SPEAKER_04]: So they know of which they speak, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: Many of them have taken this oath.

[SPEAKER_04]: And not just as members of Congress, but as members of the military.

[SPEAKER_04]: And that oath, as you said, Jamar, is to the Constitution, that oath is not to the president, and there's a very long military tradition that you actually have the right, if you think you have received an unlawful order, that is one that is unconstitutional, you have an obligation, not just to kind of obey that order, but to obey your higher allegiance to the Constitution.

[SPEAKER_04]: There is this deep American principle of allegiance, not to a person, but to the constitution.

[SPEAKER_04]: And that's all they're asking members of the military to do.

[SPEAKER_04]: And we have a president saying, that is a hangable offense.

[SPEAKER_03]: Powerfully put.

[SPEAKER_03]: Kristen, when you saw that news come across, was it just another like, well, that's Trump being Trump again, or did this kind of sound different?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and sorry, just heard my dog.

[SPEAKER_00]: I let my dog in and he was sleeping soundly and Robbie's discourse.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're just jolted him away.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, no, it is stunning.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is absolutely stunning.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I saw a reporter asked Carol and love it about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, [SPEAKER_00]: on the spot, I don't know if you saw that today.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that was also chilling, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, because she jumped on the attack.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when the question was, essentially, Trump has talked about political violence and words and as he's Democrats of kind of ratting up a political violence, well, isn't this doing exactly that?

[SPEAKER_00]: And she just, a Carolyn love it, just lashed out.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why aren't you talking about them?

[SPEAKER_00]: Why aren't you talking about these Democrats who are telling, like, 1.2 million people are active military to disobey lawful orders, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And right there, the reporters, like, they're not the lawful.

[SPEAKER_00]: They say specifically the illegal orders, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: But just like, absolutely, again, the spin, just total spin, not actually, [SPEAKER_00]: acknowledging reality, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Her job is to just spin.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is to, you know, re-truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so it is just another reminder, daily hourly reminders of this is so unprecedented.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have never had a press secretary act in this way, you know, and yes, their job is to spin, but they are still bounded by [SPEAKER_00]: semblance of, you know, aligning with reality, not denying, you know, what's right in front of us all, we have never had a precedent to use this kind of language directly, directly calling for the death of his political opponents.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's even no, for the death of members of government who are simply telling people to follow the law and honor the Constitution.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's, it's really [SPEAKER_03]: It's really important that I think what both of you said to just give us like some perspective on this because there is I think the temptation for people to say well he says outlandish things basically every time he speaks and we'll get to the Jamal Khashoggi comments in a moment and so it kind of you get numb to it.

[SPEAKER_03]: but this, to me, was a little bit even more shocking than typical because if there's ever a line, he keeps pushing it and pushing it and pushing it and pushing it to now essentially openly calling to hang, like you said, just other political officials.

[SPEAKER_03]: And this is not the main point of the conversation, but as we're talking about true social and re-truthing and the 1980 [SPEAKER_03]: which to me every time I see that, I'm thinking of the ninth commandment and do not bear false witness.

[SPEAKER_03]: And she's getting up there every single day and bearing false witness to the truth.

[SPEAKER_03]: And to your point, Kristen, like every press secretary, their job is to spin it.

[SPEAKER_03]: But the outright lies and then what she did today, the deflection, well, what about, well, what about, well, what about to your president?

[SPEAKER_03]: who has just essentially said, hang them.

[SPEAKER_03]: So I just want to, you know, as folks who isn't an ironic that the right talks about displaying the 10 commandments so often and yet flagrantly violates them so often too.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm curious, Robbie, about this whole tendency toward violence among some.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I know that in your role as a data scientist [SPEAKER_03]: surveys PRI has done you've looked at that.

[SPEAKER_03]: So do you have any of that data to put in perspective like the tendency toward violence among some in the population?

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean there's violent rhetoric and there's also actual like imagining themselves doing violence or supporting political violence on on on we we both measured like whether people think that harsh political rhetoric contributes [SPEAKER_04]: Republicans are more likely to deny that link of the independence or Democrats are who actually do see, oh, yeah, actually if you start talking about that sooner or later, somebody's going to do it, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: And because, especially if it's talked about from the higher levels, where leaders are offering permission structures for that kind of violence.

[SPEAKER_04]: And you, I mean, let's not forget, you know, Trump's connection with the news was January 6 when people were hanging, we're saying they were going to hang Mike Pence, his own vice president.

[SPEAKER_04]: right, and Trump was like, one big shoulder shrug about that, that very thing.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I think, you know, this has been very consistent, not only against Democrats, but even against people in his own party that he perceives to be somehow now not sufficiently deferential to him or not sufficiently loyal to him, no matter what their political persuasion [SPEAKER_04]: So I think that's important to remember too, and like on the actual committing of political violence or support for political violence, we have had Republicans before the election when temperatures really running high, we had three and ten Republicans saying that they could imagine that true American Patriots may have to resort to violence.

[SPEAKER_04]: in order to save the country.

[SPEAKER_04]: And among those of our Christian nationalism, it's even higher.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's up in the 40s.

[SPEAKER_04]: So and Democrats are down like 10, 12%.

[SPEAKER_04]: So it's a much very different picture.

[SPEAKER_04]: So at least twice as likely.

[SPEAKER_04]: So if I identify Republicans and particularly those who were in the MAGA camp, political violence, they've been raised and kind of brought along on a steady diet of political violence.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's not something.

[SPEAKER_04]: increasingly, not something that they recoil from.

[SPEAKER_04]: If anything, it's meant to held up this kind of a badge of honor.

[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk shooting, we heard a lot of commentary from the right that was suggesting [SPEAKER_00]: the data was the reverse of what you just shared, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: That it's the left, they, us who are using the violent rhetoric and perpetrating violence.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that was, again, you're talking about the kind of retrusing.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, that was just blanketing, social media.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm sure you did this too, Ravi.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I was like, oh, [SPEAKER_00]: Well, this kind of goes against what I remember seeing in PRI data where are they getting this from right and just really sketchy kind of survey that was done that ignores a whole lot of data that's out there.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is one of the stories from the color of compromise I cite most often because it's sadly still very relevant.

[SPEAKER_03]: And it's about the rebirth of the Ku Klux clan in 1915.

[SPEAKER_03]: So the context is Woodrow Wilson's president, birth of a nation, the film comes out, it's the first film shown in the White House, a popularful statement from Wilson said.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's like a writing history with lightning.

[SPEAKER_03]: and it's this glorified mythical tale of the clan coming together for righteous noble gentlemanly causes.

[SPEAKER_03]: Now, that was right after the Civil War is the first iteration.

[SPEAKER_03]: The second iteration was during the Jim Crow era, and on Thanksgiving Day 1915, so that anniversary is coming right up, William J.

Simmons, who was a former Methodist circuit writer, so a preacher, Christian, [SPEAKER_03]: Cather's a group of his white male friends goes to the top of Stone Mountain Georgia and does this ceremony where they burn across.

[SPEAKER_03]: They build an altar and the three items they place on the altar I think are so significant, a Bible, an American flag, and a sword.

[SPEAKER_03]: and all three of those together, just kind of encapsulate if you, if you were to create a shield or a symbol of white Christian nationalism, that would be it, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: The word of God being permission structure for their crusade to take over society and claim their supposed rightful place.

[SPEAKER_03]: The American flag, this idea of the United States being founded as a Christian nation, and we have to get back to these Christian principles, and then of course is the sword, which says, yes, violence will be necessary to enforce our views and in fact, it would be a holy war, it would be somehow righteous violence.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I often say that if that ceremony took place today, it would be a Bible of flag and perhaps a AR-15.

[SPEAKER_03]: Some sort of automatic assault rifle, but this is part and parcel of historically what White Christian nationalism has always been willing to do is resort to the most brutal, [SPEAKER_04]: I just want to put an excellent point on that.

[SPEAKER_04]: I think people, I'm still stone when I will often use the example of the KKK as because people, oh, you know, it's Christian nationalism new.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I was like, well, no, it's not new at all.

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, we have a new iterations of it in our day that are really important to pay attention to, but I always use the KKK as an example of a Christian nationalist group.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I kind of watch people [SPEAKER_04]: kind of react and go away what do you mean it's a Christian nationalist group because they really have forgotten or I should say there's been a very successful campaign of separating Christianity from the KKK to protect Christian kind of white Christianity but man it was if you read their literature it was absolutely you had to you had to be a confessing Protestant Christian you could not be a member if you were not a confessing Protestant Christian you couldn't be a member of the KKK [SPEAKER_00]: So we're talking Christian nationalism here and I think all this noticed earlier today we're chatting about a couple of religion reporters at the New York Times who disclosed in an interview that they don't use the term Christian nationalism that it was a term invented by scholars and they just do their reporting on American religion these days without touching that term.

[SPEAKER_04]: All right.

[SPEAKER_04]: That's the most ridiculous thing ever.

[SPEAKER_04]: All right.

[SPEAKER_04]: So what?

[SPEAKER_04]: So you're going to be a science reporter and you're going to write about human genetics without using the terms DNA.

[SPEAKER_04]: Right, because a bunch of scientists made those terms up.

[SPEAKER_04]: This is what scientists do, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: Scientists create categories in terms to help us understand reality.

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, that is what the goal of a scientist is, whether it's a social sciences or a natural science.

[SPEAKER_04]: That's what historians do, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: They, you break things into periods, so people could actually understand, oh, this happened and then something shifted.

[SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[SPEAKER_04]: So now we're in a new time.

[SPEAKER_04]: So we give it a name, you know, some of our period or the reconstruction period or the redemption period.

[SPEAKER_04]: All right.

[SPEAKER_04]: You, you, those are artificial constructs, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: But they're really useful for human comprehension of reality.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I find it both simultaneously naive and ignorant and arrogant that reporters would decide, oh, they know better.

[SPEAKER_04]: than the people who study this stuff and dedicate their lives to studying this for a living.

[SPEAKER_04]: Right?

[SPEAKER_04]: It would be one thing if they would say, okay, so there's a debate within social science about what this looks like and here's how this group classifies it, here's how that group.

[SPEAKER_04]: Then you're engaging in the best that are universities and the best minds we have and experts in the field are giving you to work with.

[SPEAKER_04]: But to say that you can just sit back and I'm going to describe reality with my own two eyes without the use of experts I think is it's journalistic malpractice [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and you know, as we're kind of fighting for the life of democracy right now, it's a, I'm not sure that anybody went press won't acknowledge that religion is at the core here of the threat and so what kind of religion, how do we talk about it if we're trying to like just not even go there or be careful not to and not use the the language that we have to talk about this think I think about.

[SPEAKER_00]: the Charlie Kirk Memorial, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: That's spectacle.

[SPEAKER_00]: How do you describe what that was?

[SPEAKER_00]: With, I mean, sure, you don't have to use this term necessarily, but you need to be talking about the concepts.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so maybe use the term because now a whole lot of folks on the Christian right have embraced that term.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the disagreements that we're seeing is not whether America [SPEAKER_00]: and not whether that should be enforced, not whether Christians should have supremacy, it is how white nationalist is this Christian nationalism, how white supremacists, how anti-Semitic is it, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Those are the disagreements right now within these Christian nationalist spaces, but you know we've got to look at this, we've got to confront it and we have to have some terminology [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, if you're not going to use that term, are you also not going to cover that story and, to me, that, that in this moment is sending, just as the rest of the media is really kind of becoming aware, the rest of the American public, let's just put it that way.

[SPEAKER_04]: Not a wooden one.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yep.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, look at Mike Johnson, the speaker of the house.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can tell you how he is just rooted in old school Christian National is a steep and David Barton, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: You know, like within a appeal to heaven flags stacked outside his door.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, this is this is what we are living through when you kind of understand what is happening in our country.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you don't understand what is happening in these right wing Christian spaces and how that's been mainstreamed right.

[SPEAKER_00]: So again, if you don't want to use that term fine, I guess, but not really fine, but you know, don't look away.

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't look away from from this and certainly relate to reporters, right.

[SPEAKER_04]: All right, you know, this is struck into everyone.

[SPEAKER_04]: They have to say one more thing, it really is absurd because if you look at like the rest of the language that these reporters use in their articles, they're all terms made up by sociologists and historians and people who study, so by this logic, none of those reporters should be using the word evangelical.

[SPEAKER_04]: None of those reporters should frankly be using the word Christian because that's also kind of a word that has specific meaning based on kind of affiliation and history and other kinds of stuff, you know, people mean different things by it, like all of those words are contested, right, but but there's a scholarship that gives them solidity, right, and that's what you've got engaged and you can really do have to [SPEAKER_04]: If you're going to write about an area, I have this deep suspicion that there's something about religion that reporters think they could be amateurish about.

[SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[SPEAKER_04]: And a way that they would not dare do if they were reporting on climate change, if they were reporting on immigration patterns, if they were reporting on all kinds of other phenomena, they would absolutely think I should talk to the people who know the most about this and get the most precise understanding.

[SPEAKER_04]: I have that's my responsibility as a reporter.

[SPEAKER_04]: But for some reason, they think it's a religion.

[SPEAKER_04]: I'll just wing it.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I think this is more than just semantics.

[SPEAKER_03]: So to your point, Robbie, I think there is maybe an assumption that people can insert more of their own and a total understanding around religion there.

[SPEAKER_04]: If you're writing the opinion page, is it going to do that?

[SPEAKER_03]: I love how you cue this up, Kristen.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think also there's a bit of religion being a third rail in journalism, but there are a lot of folks not necessarily these two journalists that were made this statement, but there are a lot of other journalists who don't feel have enough facility, feel like they have enough facility with religion to comment, they don't want to see anti whatever religion, anti-Christian, anti-Muslim, anti-Jewish, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: I think there's a little bit of tip-toeing around there, but on this issue, [SPEAKER_03]: I also think that it's way more than semantics because one of the things, one of the comments I get every time I post about white Christian nationalism from lay people is, this isn't Christian.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I get it.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like I'm not trying to give a theological treatise here, but there is this body of scholarship, there's this umbrella of religious nationalism, so you can have Hindu nationalism and Muslim nationalism and all kinds of nationalism, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: and there's this subset called Christian nationalism that we study as a body of knowledge and a way of categorizing what we're observing.

[SPEAKER_03]: So when you hear that term, don't take it as like co-signing their behavior as being like Christ.

[SPEAKER_03]: No, we're simply saying that of the religious symbols they choose to adopt their Christian symbols.

[SPEAKER_03]: The permission structure they're appealing to is the Christian religion.

[SPEAKER_03]: And so I do think it's important for folks to recognize that like we're not just throwing that term out there lazily.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's it's actually got a context and substance to it.

[SPEAKER_03]: And this is my little soap box is I don't hear enough black Christians using the term.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I don't know quite why that is.

[SPEAKER_03]: There aren't even that many black scholars who are studying white Christian nationalism in a formal [SPEAKER_03]: In the black churches use the term because it opens up an entire body of scholarship that you can then learn from.

[SPEAKER_03]: And true enough, it's still white supremacy, it's still racism, but there's also this flowering of scholarship in various fields that use the term that if when you use it, you now have access to that.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I want to give a little shout out here to many journalists who are doing some really, really tough work.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know, I know we all spent a lot of time talking with journalists and I have to say that when you dig deeper into some of these spaces, yeah, I've lost track of the number of interviews I've given on Doug Wilson.

[SPEAKER_00]: for example, and Pete Hugseth and Doug Wilson, or on various individuals, the inner workings of the SPC.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what I will say is that often, these journalists are not actually religion reporters.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, they rarely are.

[SPEAKER_00]: But they're doing the really hard work and they have the patience.

[SPEAKER_00]: You all apologize up front, like, okay, you're gonna get more than you, you can possibly use here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, no, no, no, no, give it to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I really wanna understand, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So that, okay, let's go back [SPEAKER_00]: presuppositionalism here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go back, you know, like stay with me and I'll show you why this matters are let's talk about David Barton and let's and what I find is just real patience and willingness to go into those complicated spaces, at least I'm often impressed, a real dedication.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there have been some really great investigative stories that, you know, as scholars, we might like, you know, might frame that a little bit differently there in that sentence, but I've been I've been [SPEAKER_00]: impressed repeatedly by the investigative journalists who have really put in the time to understand what it is that we're looking at and sometimes they bring a kind of fresh perspective.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I will also say that, you know, we talked about a fear of kind of not wanting to make religion look bad.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's very much a kind of sensibility.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was interesting to me as that a lot of journalists that I talked to while some of them are people of faith themselves.

[SPEAKER_00]: Many are not, but among those who are not, they almost always have like a personal connection.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe they grew up in a face tradition, their grandmother, I just heard a story about somebody's grandmother yesterday when I was talking with them and how they just cherished her faith commitment, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So these folks like whether or not they're practicing in a face tradition often have a real kind of positive connection or an affinity or, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So they're really wanting to bring out.

[SPEAKER_00]: the layers, the texture, and not kind of damn an entire faith tradition painting broad brush strokes, but they are also seeing what's happening and they are keen in on the role of that particular religious traditions are playing in this moment.

[SPEAKER_04]: Also, one of the things I appreciate is because I'm with you, I've talked to way more journalists that, you know, are deeply careful and dedicated to what they're doing and the thing I always appreciate is, you know, I mean, every reporter comes in with hutch, right, about the shape of the story and they have a sense of like where they think the story is going to go, but the really good ones and I would say the ones that are doing the real job of journalism.

[SPEAKER_04]: are also willing to hear counter evidence to their initial hunch.

[SPEAKER_04]: And in fact, when they hear that, they most often are like, oh, that is so helpful because I was thinking this, but actually you're saying it's that, and they're excited about that.

[SPEAKER_04]: Actually, they're not like, oh no, I've already got my whole story written and now your quote doesn't fit into my prefab thesis.

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, that's not really journalism anyway, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, journalism is about [SPEAKER_04]: as close as you can and you gather the evidence and you write the story after.

[SPEAKER_04]: But I think that's the, yeah, so I would just, you know, so we're not painting a broad brush ourselves.

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, my bigs experience and this is actually, like you said, the people outside the religion beat are often this way, just saying like, I think I got it, you know, here's what I think's happening, but you tell me, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: What do you see?

[SPEAKER_04]: And let me see how that fits and they're actually what you can kind of see them in real-time way.

[SPEAKER_04]: waying the evidence right and shaping the story, you know, as you talk, and sometimes they'll come back.

[SPEAKER_04]: I probably had that thing too, say, hey, you know, since we talked, I talked to three other people, here's what I'm now seeing, can I just check in on one more thing with you, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: And like, that's beautiful when that's happening, because I mean, that's a really well-crafted, you know, well-crafted story.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I don't say it often enough, but shout out to journalists, the ones who are really sticking to their craft and working extremely hard to get the facts in the data right, and there's a saying that journalism is the first draft of history, because often times as historians, we're going back to the newspapers to magazine articles to the words and the work that journalists did in real time.

[SPEAKER_03]: to get an understanding 30, 40, 50, 100 years later what was going on in that time period.

[SPEAKER_03]: So, they're really critical truth tellers right now.

[SPEAKER_03]: We want to shout out any of the journalists who are listening to the convocation unscriptive.

[SPEAKER_03]: We recognize the importance of what you're doing and speak and the challenging.

[SPEAKER_03]: And the challenging climate, yes, you're under attack.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh.

[SPEAKER_00]: When you mentioned that tomorrow, I think I actually, in my acknowledgements and Jesus and John Wayne, I think journalists because I had exactly that, you know, in terms of first draft of history, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm coming right behind and and, you know, the quality of the coverage of recent decades.

[SPEAKER_00]: right?

[SPEAKER_00]: I thought like I personally knew some of these journalists because I was like following them through history as they were telling this story, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was just absolutely invaluable to me to then take that, you know, first draft and then pick it, fit into a larger, a larger puzzle and pull the thread all the way through.

[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, great respect for that work.

[SPEAKER_00]: Kind of work that I do that we do would be much more difficult if not impossible if we didn't have that first draft to [SPEAKER_03]: Well, we didn't plan it this way, but it does dovetail into another aspect of the violence that this political regime is promoting.

[SPEAKER_03]: So Trump sat down with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the sort of [SPEAKER_03]: lightning rod moment of the press conference they gave was when a journalist asked about the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

[SPEAKER_03]: Of course, it was an incredibly violent crime where they actually dismembered this journalist.

[SPEAKER_03]: And so the the the question was posed like you know there are a lot of people who are upset about that and here you are meeting with the Saudi crown prince now it's the context is US intelligence in 2021 determine that the crown prince had approved the operation that led to Khashoggi's death at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

[SPEAKER_03]: And so the Crown Prince denies any wrongdoing, but then what Trump said, he said, you're mentioning someone, meaning Khashoggi, that was extremely controversial.

[SPEAKER_03]: A lot of people didn't like that gentleman that you're talking about, whether you like him or didn't like him, things happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: My goodness.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I missed the days when that would be just wall to wall coverage and the end of a presidency.

[SPEAKER_00]: Miss, I missed the moral reality that there was a time when that was unthinkable for a president to say for any political leader in this country to say anything remotely like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, it just, it makes me grief.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, this was a Washington Post reporter.

[SPEAKER_04]: We're talking about, right, who was lured to the Saudi consulate in Turkey under false pretenses.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: And the CIA, our own intelligence agency determined.

[SPEAKER_04]: that this was improved right by the Saudi Crown Prince came directly from him and so we had yeah, we have our sitting president ignoring our own intelligence agencies conclusions about that and and not only ignoring them but just yeah just it's funny because in a way he didn't exactly deny it right he just kind of monna you know he was unpopular [SPEAKER_04]: and things happen.

[SPEAKER_04]: But I think the sort of again, the kind of shoulder shrug to just premeditated murder, you know, is it is it's just shocking.

[SPEAKER_03]: And the fact that he's even meeting with the Saudi conference at all, I didn't have a reporter for embarrassing his guest.

[SPEAKER_03]: He said you're a very [SPEAKER_03]: And yet, not only is Trump meeting with him, there are business deals that are benefiting his family, his businesses to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

[SPEAKER_03]: And it's just like, you know, when are we going to say enough is enough?

[SPEAKER_03]: And that's not even to talk about the quiet piggy remark that he made to another journalist.

[SPEAKER_03]: Where I think was where they on Air Force One and a journalist asked questions he didn't [SPEAKER_03]: And that stuck in my crawl too because of all the outlandish things he says, the level of dehumanization, sexism, just outright bourishness of a comment like that from the president of the United States, this is the office that little kids said, I want to be president one day and we held up these leaders as examples.

[SPEAKER_03]: of what to be like, God forbid we could ever recommend this man in his behavior to anyone let alone children.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's just one thing after another, but I hope we're not so callous to numb to think that's just Trump.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, to make this even darker, I think it's worth bringing up the relationship that Jared Kushner had with the Saudi crown prince that was called into question and after the murder of Kushoji right and so to see Trump snap in the way he did.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that there's more digging to be done in that respect as well, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think one of the things that I feel like in the last week or two, particularly in light of the Epstein.

[SPEAKER_00]: files and the conversations building up to release of the emails that have really driven some of the news coverage.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that we're getting a bit of a glimpse into a dark underworld here, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And we have the cross comments, the quiet piggy.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have the shrugging at murder.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have the death threats.

[SPEAKER_00]: All of that in some ways it seems to me like that is on the surface of something [SPEAKER_00]: I can't even say much darker because that's that's dark enough, but something deeper right that that is accurately reflecting the level of evil that we are dealing with and it runs deep through networks and it has a global reach right and so you know I think as an American as a citizen as a human right now I'm feeling a little overwhelmed.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm also feeling a little encouraged because it is becoming more visible to more people.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I think that's right.

[SPEAKER_04]: And it's just right in front of us every day in different ways.

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, most of what we're talking about happened two day, right, not just in the last week, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: Most of what we're talking about in this episode was in the last 24 hours, you know, happening.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I think the other thing we should just all be prepared for is that this is not all just rhetoric.

[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I fully expect, and we're gonna see the pullback of public hangings.

[SPEAKER_04]: right for enemies of the state.

[SPEAKER_04]: This is what we've seen.

[SPEAKER_04]: Our colleague Ruth Benghiyat was commenting on this earlier today that, you know, this kind of rhetoric is not just rhetoric.

[SPEAKER_04]: It sets the stage.

[SPEAKER_04]: It starts creating a kind of permission structure, possibility in people's minds.

[SPEAKER_04]: You know, so the comeback of the news, the comeback of the hanging, all that stuff is not accidental, you know.

[SPEAKER_04]: And [SPEAKER_04]: that idea of trees and we'll hang them like all of that, you know, it's beginning to kind of set the stage for these are things that are not, you know, rhetoric in Trump's mind.

[SPEAKER_04]: I don't believe.

[SPEAKER_03]: and like you said, Robby, all this in the past 24 hours such that we didn't even get to the Epstein files news.

[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, in a stunning sort of turn of events, Trump signed the bill to release the Epstein files.

[SPEAKER_03]: This comes after the House passed legislation, or 127 to one.

[SPEAKER_03]: was the vote, and then the Senate gave a unanimous consent to pass it upon a rival, which immediately sent the bill to Trump and he put again on his true social platform, perhaps the truth about these Democrats, and their associations with Jeffrey Epstein will soon be revealed, because I've just signed the bill to release the Epstein files he wrote.

[SPEAKER_03]: So, color me skeptical, for I think there's a couple of things going on.

[SPEAKER_03]: pressure works.

[SPEAKER_03]: This has been a front burner issue really throughout his presidency, but especially from just before the government shut down throughout it and then now immediately following it, he had to respond.

[SPEAKER_03]: He couldn't deflect from it with no matter what he said or did.

[SPEAKER_03]: So that's I think maybe a positive sign.

[SPEAKER_03]: But the other thing is now, the DOJ is completely [SPEAKER_03]: He's reopened in investigation, which allows him and the DOJ to conveniently hold back any files because it part of an active investigation now.

[SPEAKER_03]: Not only that, his Department of Justice has had these documents for months and months to potentially scrub them of any incriminating evidence if it's there around Trump and his criminal activities.

[SPEAKER_03]: So, we shall see, but they have 30 days.

[SPEAKER_03]: from the signing of that bill to put something out there, just quick reactions from both of y'all.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have a lot of thoughts here, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm skeptical too.

[SPEAKER_00]: And first of all, you know, to Trump's post about, yeah, let's rebuild the Democrats, 100%.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have no doubt.

[SPEAKER_00]: No doubt at all that there are Democrats in those files that are implicated in horrific acts.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the thing, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want Democratic pedophiles.

[SPEAKER_00]: running our government or Republican ones, not at all like it's it's it's win-win here, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: It clean house on all sides, like a hundred percent, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: This is not a this is not a partisan issue.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that you know that you know Trump can't see anything that's not a partisan issue by which he means like how it affects him personally, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's who he is.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know of any ordinary [SPEAKER_00]: the Epstein case who are not on the same page as I am on this, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's the thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: We want them all exposed and accountability and justice across the board.

[SPEAKER_00]: We do not care where they land on the political spectrum, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: But in the emails that were released.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, are you just these emails?

[SPEAKER_00]: We saw some interesting [SPEAKER_00]: Storylines emerge many of them we're seeing them right there's a lot of emails and and people are kind of going through and setting up databases and so on I just wrote on Substack earlier this week about one little exchange in that in the email cache That caught my eye and I'm I'm quoting from Nephi's Ahmed at the by-line times that covered this story and it was about Steve Bannon [SPEAKER_00]: and Steve Bannon and Epstein in an email exchange.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a lot going on about financial dealings.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's a whole lot that could be said on that front.

[SPEAKER_00]: But within this email where they're kind of scheming about how to funnel money and so on, Bannon presents this kind of plan for how to build out a right wing movement in the government.

[SPEAKER_00]: and what's interesting to our purposes here as scholars of religion, ban a new that Christianity could play a role.

[SPEAKER_00]: So he's talking about building out this strategy, a right-wing coalition specifically to save off times up for the next decade plus, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So this is going after the times up, the me-to-stuff, [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you can imagine why obscene would be interested in, you know, tamping that down.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Bannon has an idea.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then the question comes up should this movement that we can write wing political movement, you know, should it have a Christian component, a tie?

[SPEAKER_00]: If you form a church, you may be able to tell Mueller you have a confession privilege, just mildly face emoji, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And now here is Ahmed commenting, even allowing for gallows humor, the suggestion is extraordinary.

[SPEAKER_00]: Create religious entity that could invoke clergy penitent privilege to shield communications from special counsel criminal investigation and to Trump regarding Russian interference and so on, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a whole scheme, [SPEAKER_00]: with an outline, a strategy for how to achieve this essentially political takeover to advance their interests, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: The sexual predator interests here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what it is.

[SPEAKER_00]: Populous slash nationalist first, second point, conservative Christians, parentheses, Catholic evangelical.

[SPEAKER_00]: Next.

[SPEAKER_00]: Nationalists first get the conservative evangelicals and the conservative Catholics on board right those are the ingredients for the secret sauce and this is part of the coalition that is going to save off times up for the next decade plus.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this is all very interesting, but as I wrote in the post, it's particularly interesting because you look at what happened inside the SBC just after this email exchange, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because this is happening right around the time where you have times up, me too, church too.

[SPEAKER_00]: You have figures like Rachel Den Hollander, raising the issue of abuse that happens inside church spaces.

[SPEAKER_00]: You have the SBC abuse reform task force, [SPEAKER_00]: Also, just like with the Epstein case, it was placed on the list of priorities, it was actually a surface by survivors themselves, by survivors took it upon themselves to keep pushing.

[SPEAKER_00]: The SBC was just at the point of taking this seriously, doing a calling for an investigation, trying to fix this very broken system.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then what happened?

[SPEAKER_00]: Massive, massive, coordinated backlash against abuse reform efforts.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like I write in this piece, like hold on, wait a minute.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're talking sexual abuse.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're talking [SPEAKER_00]: Sexual impurity, if you will, adultery, right, let's, again, we've got 10 commandments that cover this here, right, and, you know, and if evangelicals love to talk about anything in the last 20, 30 years, it's the sexual purity stuff, right.

[SPEAKER_00]: So here we have people inside the church saying, this stuff is bad.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a problem.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's address it.

[SPEAKER_00]: What happened to them?

[SPEAKER_00]: They were literally demonized, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: A video made of Rachel Den Hollander, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Insignuating she's doing the work of the devil.

[SPEAKER_00]: The people who are leading the call for abuse reform, people like Russell Moore pushed out of the SBC because of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Beth Moore, same thing, Karen Swallow prior, pushed out.

[SPEAKER_00]: Crazy coincidence isn't it that this is these strategy that Bannon brings right to get rid of me to politically culturally and also happens to take place inside that species.

[SPEAKER_03]: Robbie you got the last word on this any responses and you also had an interesting subject article this week.

[SPEAKER_04]: I don't think I've got anything to add.

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, Christmas is just so eloquent with that.

[SPEAKER_04]: And so just just such an indictment.

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, really, it's all you can really say.

[SPEAKER_04]: Again, it's just so out there and that any religious entity could find themselves on that side of the debate is just unfathomable to me.

[SPEAKER_04]: But [SPEAKER_04]: Do we want to talk about chat by Jesus, though?

[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, where do we go for wisdom and insight?

[SPEAKER_03]: How's that for a second?

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, we need, we are missing our pastoral member of the team.

[SPEAKER_00]: Get angry.

[SPEAKER_00]: I go off way too long and then Diana jumps in and talks about beauty or grace or gratitude and we have this awkward silence now because you can't edit podcasts on Kristin's dietride.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, everybody should go get a beautiful year and you will have right by right on your table while you're listening to us.

[SPEAKER_04]: I'll just like have it with this because you'll feel like reading it if you listen to this podcast, especially without Diana here.

[SPEAKER_03]: But I did want to shout out your creativity.

[SPEAKER_03]: It was really fun and interesting and revealing sub-stack article that you did.

[SPEAKER_03]: What was it called?

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I'll give you the brief thing.

[SPEAKER_04]: So, you know, speaking of reporters, I got dragged into this by reporters.

[SPEAKER_04]: It wasn't something on my bingo card for the week.

[SPEAKER_04]: But I got this call from Russ Contreras at the Axios, who actually does great religion reporting.

[SPEAKER_04]: I'll give him a really nice shout out.

[SPEAKER_04]: Love talking with him and he does things from kind of like, what you'd expect, the kind of neat and potatoes reporting that you'd expect in the political and cultural rounds.

[SPEAKER_04]: And then every now and then I'll come up with these kind of cultural things that are a little out there.

[SPEAKER_04]: And so he decided he's going to write about AI because he had seen all of these AI apps popping up, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: even some pastors who were setting up a chatbot version of themselves that you could talk to for $49 a month at mega churches.

[SPEAKER_04]: kind of, you know, duplicate their own income streams, so, and he was like, okay, this is wild.

[SPEAKER_04]: I got to talk about this.

[SPEAKER_04]: So he talked to me and some other people, again, I love Russ, but what was funny about the, the only thing he quoted me on, we talked for like 20 minutes about this.

[SPEAKER_04]: But my first comment out of the box, I should know better than this with reporters.

[SPEAKER_04]: My first.

[SPEAKER_04]: coming out of the box.

[SPEAKER_04]: It was like, sure, what could go wrong, right, with with chat bot Jesus?

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, that's kind of literally what I said to him with that even no filter without, I've known him for a while.

[SPEAKER_04]: So, you know, that's the danger of knowing a reporter for a while.

[SPEAKER_04]: And, and I said that.

[SPEAKER_04]: And then we went on to have more serious conversations.

[SPEAKER_04]: So, lo and behold, what is he quote me saying, but what could go wrong, right, in the, in the, as it kind of a zinger line, in the, in the piece.

[SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, so fast forward a little bit, [SPEAKER_04]: recommend everybody to google it.

[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't think anything other because it's like a one liner right in a piece.

[SPEAKER_04]: Next thing you know, I've got a call from the producers at the today show on NBC saying, hey, we saw your diet on the checkout thing and like do you want to do you want to come on and talk with antoms and about churches use an AI and I was like, sure anytime and this is actually when we were, we were, you know, last week.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I missed the first part of dinner going to do this thing with today's show, but, you know, so we kind of had this, had this thing.

[SPEAKER_04]: So anyway, I decided okay, I've spent, now it's been all this time thinking about this.

[SPEAKER_04]: I should write something about it.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I kind of put the little interview for me with me in Russ and Axios and me and Ann Thompson and up there just so people could see it.

[SPEAKER_04]: And then I said, okay, so I did all this stuff.

[SPEAKER_04]: I decided I'm going to do a little experiment.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I took one of the services, which was the text with Jesus app and decided [SPEAKER_04]: All right, well, let's go have a little conversation with AI Jesus and see what happens and I was unprepared for what happened when I got on there when you first sign on the the site, first of all, there's the most Aryan Jesus I've ever seen look you know some Mel Gibson and you know somebody cross between Mel and somebody else.

[SPEAKER_04]: But very white, very kind of brown, flowing hair, to be on the cover of romance novel to shout out to Chris and on that one.

[SPEAKER_04]: But that's there.

[SPEAKER_04]: And then you can pick between Jesus and all the apostles.

[SPEAKER_04]: You could talk to them too.

[SPEAKER_04]: But are you could talk to members of the Holy Family, including Jesus?

[SPEAKER_04]: But Jesus is the widest dude on there.

[SPEAKER_04]: Some of the rest of the apostles actually look, Semitic or Middle Eastern, Jesus very white.

[SPEAKER_04]: So then you pick Jesus, not that okay.

[SPEAKER_04]: So here we go.

[SPEAKER_04]: But then it takes you to another screen.

[SPEAKER_04]: and they say which Jesus do you want to talk to?

[SPEAKER_04]: And I was like, wait, what's happening here?

[SPEAKER_04]: And the way they did it is they listed denominations.

[SPEAKER_04]: You put in your denomination and they will calibrate chatbot Jesus to be appropriate to your denomination.

[SPEAKER_04]: The other crazy thing, though, Jamar, is that they're only white denominations listed in the list.

[SPEAKER_04]: Like, Amy's not there.

[SPEAKER_04]: Amy's Zion's not there.

[SPEAKER_04]: National Baptist not there.

[SPEAKER_04]: So none of the big black Baptist [SPEAKER_04]: or Latino denominations that I could, that I could gather, all big white, so I decided to say, okay, this will be fun.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I opened two different browsers, and I put SBC Jesus, the Southern Baptist Convention, Jesus, and one browser, and UCC Jesus, the United Church of Christ, Jesus, and the other browser, right, who are kind of on very opposite political ends of the spectrum, and I decided to ask them questions about immigration and Trump's immigration [SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, I won't spoil it for you, but let's just say that SBC Jesus kept referring back to Romans 13 and deference to the power of the state.

[SPEAKER_04]: And that did not show up in UCC Jesus' response about all this.

[SPEAKER_04]: So anyway, you can read the piece to [SPEAKER_04]: see, but I mean, I was kind of having fun with it, but it does raise some very serious, serious theological issues and some kind of, you know, serious technology issues, like people think they're texting with Jesus, but which Jesus are they texting with?

[SPEAKER_04]: They sure weren't texting with Howard Thurman's Jesus.

[SPEAKER_04]: I could tell you that, because he wasn't on the page to pick for him.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I really wish you was, because that would have been fun too to put Howard Thurman's Jesus in front of all of him, Jesus in the disenherited and see how that went, how that went down.

[SPEAKER_04]: You know, this kind of black box of people who are going to be yet texting with Jesus and trying to get, you know, I'm praying with Jesus on these online bots, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: And none of us really know what goes into those, those things.

[SPEAKER_04]: But I can tell you this, what we know about that one is a lot of white supremacy goes into the box when you get to talk to to at least SBC Jesus.

[SPEAKER_03]: Well, apparently we can choose our favorite Jesus.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, chat with.

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, is the worst in that you calibrate Jesus to you?

[SPEAKER_03]: Isn't that a parable for our cultural Christianity?

[SPEAKER_03]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_03]: Well, on that note, I'll be having me and my co-host.

[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Convocation Unscripted.

[SPEAKER_03]: Remember to subscribe to Convocation.substack.com, but also our individual substax where you get great articles like both Kristen and Robby mentioned.

[SPEAKER_03]: And we'll see you at the next Convocation.