Augusta DellÕOmo: Welcome to Right Rising, a podcast from the Center for Analysis of the Radical Right. I'm your host Augusta DellÕOmo. Today I'm joined by Dr. Sophie Bjork-James an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University. She's here with us today to talk about white evangelicals and the right-wing. Sophie, thanks so much for being here.

Sophie Bjork-James: So happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

AD: So Sophie, and for our listeners, as they know, I typically like to start off with a pretty big question and to kind of get the ball rolling. So I wanted to ask you, why does studying religion matter? Specifically Christianity, when we're thinking about and studying the far right?

SBJ: Great question, and, and a really important one, and I kind of, for me, I stumbled into becoming a religious studies scholar, in that my primary interests are about race, gender, and politics. And so I was very interested in in developing a project setting the religious right, because at the time, and this was over 10 years ago, there's very little discussion about the relationship of race and specifically whiteness, with evangelicalism. And for me, I saw them as inseparable, you know, race, gender, sexuality, and evangelicalism, evangelical politics in particular. And so I began studying evangelicals through an interest in race and gender, and then was realized very quickly how religion is often neglected by it's often siloed. And so in terms of academics and studies, where people who study religion often tend to work can tend to ignore questions of politics, gender, and race. And but then people who study gender, race, and politics can often ignore religion. And so they're, so oftentimes, they're really inseparable. I mean, I, I how I understand the contemporary religious right, is that they formed to defend Christian interests that were explicitly racial. And so for them, they understand themselves as defending a pretty what they call like a biblical worldview. But that's, you know, inseparable from the history of white supremacy in the United States. And just so happens to also defend the current, the social order that privileges white people.

AD: Thank you for that. Really great overview, Sophie, and I want to just drill down a little bit on this idea about race. This is something that I study as well race and evangelical politics, and what does race have to do with the way evangelicals engage in politics, specifically white evangelicals? And how has this really changed over time?

SBJ: For me this question really goes back to the 1970s, this really pivotal time, it's the decade after the Civil Rights Movement has really transformed US culture, right? It's transformed US policy, law, culture, there's, in so many ways, it ended the era of at least formal legal segregation. So in the 1970s, the conservative movement in the United States is in shambles. It had been led by there was, you know, different segments of it. But, you know, economic, you know, it was really associated with either economic elitism, or with racism, overt racism and pro-segregation stances. And so what ends up happening in the late 1970s is a group of evangelicals. It's really a group of political actors, start part start kind of lobbying and lobbying evangelicals, certain evangelical leaders, specifically Jerry Falwell, to become active in politics. And there's a lot of resistance. So two evangelicals seeing themselves as political, because of a long, long history of evangelicals and fundamentalists kind of associate being a kind of rejecting secular culture and kind of having more of a parallel cultural practices and seeing politics as something that kind of goes against their religious worldview. But what's important is that before, like, like before from the middle of 1970s, before, white evangelicals were actually not affiliated with one specific party. There's quite a bit of political diversity. 

And what happens is that the first national religious right campaign was actually to defend segregated Christian schools from governmental interference. So the, you know, Brown v Board of Education in the 1960s criminalizes overt segregation. Hundreds of Christian school, private Christian schools are formed mainly across the south to allow for a de facto segregation so that white parents can pull their, their white children out of public schools and put them in the segregated Christian schools. They were called segregation academies. So under Jimmy Carter, the IRS started going after these schools and making sure that they were desegregated in practice. And so, and that is what sparked the first national religious rights campaign that was very successful. So there were, you know, a variety of groups that formed to fight what they described as secular imposition into conservative Christian values. They didn't say they were pro-segregation. But the fact is, they weren't fighting desegregation efforts. And the impact was defending segregated schools. And they won very successfully. The 1980 Republican national platform included a specific commentary about the importance of, you know, keeping education choices open for individual parents. And it was part of Reagan's platform that he was brought into office on, and you know, very explicitly the Moral Majority, the first, you know, which really transformed evangelical identity into a more political explicitly political conservative movement formed out of the drags of those ChristiansÕ private those efforts to defend private Christian schools. So the very formation of the religious right, race was incredibly central. Right. And they, what's important is they didn't understand it as fighting, anti-racism or fighting desegregation. They understood it as as defending a conservative Christian value that just so happened to be segregated. So it's at the center, but also kind of disavowed.

AD: No, I really like that phrasing that you use Sophie, of how it's at the center, and they found ways to talk about it, that it's part of a conservative Christian identity, that it's not really about race in quotes. It's just this idea about what should a conservative Christian world look like? I did want to ask you, what are the tensions that have emerged within evangelicalism more broadly around race, particularly thinking about the growing numbers of Black evangelicals, Latino evangelicals, that this is really perhaps challenging the predominance of white evangelical ideas and theories about what the world should look like, but still within this sort of conservative Christian worldview?

SBJ: Right. And the other thing that's challenging it is, right, it's explicitly patriarchal. And so it's about, you know, racial, but also gendered, right, in terms of a very clear gender hierarchy is at the center. And so there's, you know, really, incredibly broad spread campaigns, trying to shed light on sexual abuse victims within the evangelical church that have really been rocking evangelical world in terms of, you know, lots of controversy there that I don't know what the impacts will be. And some women are leaving the evangelical church because of that, and there's also, you know, increasing numbers of especially young people who are supporting LGBTQ rights, and that's also a potent, you know, starting to challenge kind of the evangelical hierarchy. I mean, so the, you know, the kind of contemporary religious right forms in the 1970s with as I see it, and as a way to oppose Civil Rights gains, and kind of establish their own political power. I mean, that's changed over time. I think that what has happened, what like in, I did research in Colorado Springs, which is a center of evangelical organizations, large churches, and, you know, the evangelicalism that I got to know there who were the city was growing really rapidly. So there's people from like, all mainly the Sunbelt, so Southern, you know, Southern California, the South and the South and the Southeast, you know, but they really understand themselves as like colorblindness was incredibly important to them, they wanted to see themselves as not explicitly racist. 

But, you know, the, the way that their theology is lived is that structural relationships become invisible. So the there's a theological emphasis on relationships on personal relationships and that you know, everyone is supposed to have a personal relationship with Jesus. But that that translates into, you know, you can actually help people like the government canÕt actually help people. So there's broad spread, disagreement with public welfare programs, or even like support for homeless people, even like food programs for children, right? Because they would see the government can't provide that personal relationship that is like at the center of evangelical worldview. And so what that means is that they can't understand structural racism, and how that actually, you know, impacts individual lives, including their own. So, you know, I'm a social scientist, and like, if we look at the data, we can see based on virtually every measure of social inequality, that racism continues to structure US society, right? That means, like, shapes everything from how early like whether or not one is likely to be born early. So whether or not one is likely to be stopped by the police. Right? So whether or not you know, like, one is likely to get a like how, how highly their house will be valued, to how long someone is likely to live right across the entire spectrum. Racism continues to restructure US society. But that takes a kind of structural understanding of society which evangelicalism explicitly denies, through privileging individual relationships. And, you know, understanding the history of whiteness in the United States like that cannot that individualism cannot be understood outside of that history. Right, which, you know, is is a way to obscure the actual reality.

AD: Absolutely. And, Sophie, I'd love for you to talk a little bit about not just the research that you did, but who are some of the key players within white evangelical politics, particularly now you you talked a little bit about the 70s. And I think some of our listeners may be familiar with the Jerry Falwells the Moral Majority, those sort of big Reagan era names, but evangelical politics have changed quite a bit since the 70s, and 80s. So who are we thinking about now? Who are the kind of key players that interested observers should keep their eye on?

SBJ: Right. I mean, there was Jerry Falwell, Jr. has been incredibly powerful until he like he, you know, there's this kind of incredible scandal of involving a pool boy that had a like, long term sexual relationship with his wife, or maybe it was very complicated. But I think he has kind of fallen out of favor with evangelicalism. But I mean, it's really the Family Research Council in Washington, DC and Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs, I mean, Focus on the Family was led by James Dobson for decades, and he left that organization to start another. And so it became a little bit less political, but it's still really a center of white evangelical culture. And then, but it's really the Family Research Council in Washington, DC, they organize an annual Value Voters Summit that brings together all of the leadership of the religious right across the country, to set an agenda. And the racial politics of that is a really interesting because, you know, for, I mean, for over a decade, I mean, I think they with under, under the Obama administration, they felt very, there's a lot of insecurity about being able to, you know, have their criticisms of Obama without being called racist. 

But that there has been this insecurity about, you know, how do you have a majority white, almost exclusively white movement, you know, criticizing, especially under Obama, a Black president, and without being called racist. And so there has been this, like, very concerted effort to bring in people of color in the leader, in leadership. And so what I found when attending the Value Voters Summit is that there's often more people of color on stage than there are in the audience. Right? And so, it's not like they want to embrace I mean, some of them I'm sure, it will embrace explicit racism, but many of them want to embrace more of a colorblindness and, you know, will really support especially African-Americans who, you know, support their agenda, which is limited government, supporting patriarchy, and opposing LGBTQ rights. And so they're very happy to welcome you know, a diverse range of people who all believe the exact same beliefs that they believe and those believes really cannot be understood with, outside of the history of white supremacy in the United States, and especially in suburbanization. Right that, you know, the kind of post-World War II suburbanization, which created these white enclaves that were very homogeneous that stripped European immigrants to the United States from their ethnic context. And really what they valued was the nuclear family. And that is the heart of white evangelicalism is this embrace of it's a very suburban ethic. It's a very, you know, it's about, you know, kind of the nuclear family ideal.

AD: No, that's is really helpful. Sophie, and you touched on this a little bit, but I did want to drill down on some of the key issues for white evangelicals. Now, I think many of our listeners are familiar with the anti-LGBTQ position of many of these actors and organizations, the anti-abortion, the sort of patriarchal hierarchy in the in the particular family unit emphasis, but are other key issues for white evangelicals that maybe we're missing? And this focus on perhaps just these sort of, as we think of them, the big two that seemed to kind of dominate the way that we think about evangelical activism now?

SBJ: Yeah, so I did over a hundred interviews with evangelicals. And I would generally end with a question of, you know, what responsibilities do Christians have to society or to politics? And almost every single one ended with people saying, like, oh, well, it's not about prescription and like, you know, it's not about you know, it's, it's, this is about my personal faith and my relationships. It's not about politics, but you know, so I can't. There's hemming and hawing. And they'd be like, okay, but if there were two issues, it'd be really about marriage and abortion. Right, in terms of defending heterosexual marriage and opposing abortion. So those are kind of the, you know, the key stones of evangelical politics. Without a doubt. There's, you know, a lot of Christian Zionism is very central to evangelical politics. And in that, there's, uh, you know, it manifests in different ways. But the, there's a belief that, you know, like Israel has to be the domain like, has to be a Jewish state in order for Jesus to return which is very central to their worldview is that they believe that, you know, Jesus is going to return at some point and create and the world will disappear. And that, that, you know, people who are born again, will end up in an everlasting heaven. But so Zionism Christian Zionism is actually really central to a lot of evangelical politics. 

And then, with that is, you know, is that the white evangelicals, are the largest group that disavows the reality of anthropogenic climate change. And what I found is that that very much is in line with, I mean, on the one hand, climate change is a structural issue. Right, it involves kind of an analysis about, like economics and resource extraction and changes to the atmosphere that is very easy for evangelicals to disavow. And it also, you know, the thing is, is that the kind of mainstream Evangelical, eschatological view or like view of the End Times is that the earth is really disposable. And I've had people explicitly say that this is a disposable planet, right? This is, you know, a sinking ship. Right? And like, the only salvation is not to fix this place, right? And it's not to, you know, deal with the climate crisis, right. It's this idea that, you know, this is a sinking ship, and this is a disposable planet. And therefore, what we need to do is save individual lives, right. And so, I mean, that really shifts the entire ethic away from you know, like, you know, everything from making sure people have enough food to eat, right, and to making sure that the planet will be livable in a in 150 years like those, those issues become, like less significant, then this kind of individual salvation, but that, that ability to kind of conceptualize individual souls as separate from bodies is a has a very long history and European thought. And, you know, I think also really speaks to the way that you know, many white people in the United States have been able to be distanced from the climate catastrophe, and and from environmental destruction. You know, the environmental racism has ensured that, you know, most of the heavily polluting industries are in communities of color. And so, you know, I think that you That is another issue in terms of, you know, think race. In particular, whiteness has been very central to their environmental ethic. And there's people that are within evangelicalism that are trying to challenge that as a justice issue. And it'll be interesting to see where that goes moving forward.

AD: It's so interesting that you bring up this sort of apocalyptic salvation aspect of evangelicals. And this is one of those elements that I think is most difficult for people who haven't studied evangelicals or haven't grown up in the community to really sort of understand the disposability elements of the planet of saying, you know, this is not what we're what we're fighting for. This is not the item of our focus. And it can be quite, I think, difficult for outside observers who haven't necessarily studied or grown up in that environment to really process the the seriousness with which they they view that and take that as is genuine that sort of advocacy. So wanted to ask you at the time that we have left, where do you see this movement going? I know you're an anthropologist, and I'm a historian, and we do not future predict. But where do you think that this movement is going to evolve over the next five years, particularly, you know, the relationship that the religious right had with the Trump administration?

SBJ: Right, without, without predicting, I mean, I, I am, I am really concerned, because what I saw under with with, I think we can't talk about the, like Trump administration and Trump rhetoric outside of social media, and the ability for like those messages to spread and also for the, you know, more overtly racist corners of social media to like, end up spreading more broadly. But, I mean, what I saw is that there is much more of an embrace of explicit racism, you know, explicit anti-immigrant sentiment, that, in particular, that I think is could be really dangerous moving forward. And so, I mean, I think that there's different trends happening, and I'm not sure what what is actually going to happen. You know, we mentioned that, you know, there is there's a series of controversies that have happened around, you know, sexual abuse scandals. There's, you know, a whole movement of moms, in particular moms of LGBTQ kids that are spread out across in every in every corner of evangelical America, who are choosing to not disavow those children. I mean, for decades, they've that's been their only choice. And often still, like if you know, their their choices, often to embrace their queer children or to be ostracized, like to sorry to disavow them or to be ostracized, those are the choices. But there's a whole movement of moms that are starting to challenge the heterosexism at the center of evangelicalism, which would also then change its racial politics because it would start destabilizing the emphasis on hierarchies. 

And younger people are leaving have been leaving evangelicalism in droves for decades, you know, they often see that the kind of religious right embrace of their parents, as, you know, a form of like as, as as something that isn't actually that significant. Many of them have spent time abroad doing missionary work and seeing poverty, and then they come back home, and they see their parents as just defending their own lifestyle is how it's been explained to me. And so there's a variety of tensions. I think that, you know, there's tensions around. You know, there are, there are a number of there, there, there was an increasing number of African-Americans who identified as evangelical and attended large evangelical churches, that there's been huge tensions since Trump was elected. With with, with African-American evangelicals, and you know, with the increasing, I mean, I think one of the bigger biggest issues is about what will happen with like Latino or Latinx evangelicals moving forward? And will they be kind of brought into the broader conservative movement? And can that can the movement expand to be less explicitly rooted in whiteness, right, or can it expand its understanding of whiteness to include Latinx like evangelicals or not? And so I think that, yeah, there's a lot of a lot of possibilities. And I think I'm, I'm not gonna say which one I don't know, I don't know what's gonna happen. I think there's just a lot of different possibilities for moving forward.

AD: Well, Sophie, thank you so much for being here. And for our listeners, where can they read more of your work? Where can they find your research? Where can they find your book? Where can they contact you?

SBJ: Yeah. So my, my book is available to ÒThe Divine institution.Ó It's available On bookshop.com anywhere books are sold. You can find me on Twitter at @Sbjorkjames or my website is sophiebjorkjames.com and that's bjorkjames. Yes. Thank you so much for the conversation.

AD: Thank you so much for being here. This has been another episode of Right Rising. We'll see you all next time.