In 2000, the first presidential election in which I could legally vote, I cast my ballot for George W. Bush. I was a freshman at a conservative Christian university where the outspoken majority believed this was the right thing to do. I was naïve about the political issues of the day. I was naïve about everything.
Four years later, I don’t remember voting at all. I still didn’t understand why it mattered.
In 2008, I voted for Barack Obama because I finally got it.
By then, I was one of 59% of Millennials who had grown up in the church and left. I was, what Blake Chastain coined, an exvangelical. And I learned to think for myself.
In 2000, I was your enemy. By 2008, I was your ally.
It’s not impossible for people to change. It’s not impossible for people to wake up to the harm they not only enable for others but also the harm they cause themselves.
On Wednesday, I went live on Instagram and YouTube with three spiritual leaders and activists to discuss how to combat Christian Nationalism. I’m breaking up the discussion into three podcast episodes. In this first one, we discuss what Christian Nationalism is and who Christian nationalists are. The second episode is all about what hasn’t worked in combatting it, and in the third episode, we discuss what we should lean into now.
We know that the majority of people who voted for Trump identify as Christian. In this first episode, as we explore who these people are who voted for a fascist regime, I find some hope in knowing that it might’ve been me when I was younger. It might be a lot of 20 and 30-somethings who still haven’t woken up to their own trauma, who still haven’t popped the sheltered bubble around them.
So if you listen to this episode, and as we organize, I hope it’s helpful to understand that at least some of these people that are currently your enemies will, at some point, be your allies.
They aren’t today, and I truly believe our responsibility is to protect the most at-risk and marginalized among us.
But if we’re to believe that change is possible, and as we’re forced to live alongside conservatives who don’t understand the danger they’ve put so many in, that’s what I’m holding onto.
They’re not to be trusted right now. They won’t protect you. But they may be a future ally. So let’s figure out how to protect each other until that happens. And it starts by understanding who they are: our current enemy, our possible future ally.
Books and Resources Discussed in this Episode
Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States
Baptizing America: How Mainline Protestants Helped Build Christian Nationalism
Exvangelical and Beyond: How American Christianity Went Radical and the Movement That's Fighting Back
Find the Baylor Religion surveys here and the Washington Post 2024 election exit polls here.
Meet the Guests
lenny duncan is a writer, speaker, scholar, and media producer working at the forefront of racial justice in America. They are the author of Dear Church, United States of Grace, Dear Revolutionaries, and Psalms of My People.
In Dear Revolutionaries, lenny offers a series of peace-building practices that will give readers the tools to build, guide, and care for spiritual community in a world beyond the church.
A PhD student in Historical and Cultural Studies of Religion, lenny's current research is what they have termed "a peoples history of magic." lenny is originally from West Philadelphia, has hitchhiked thousands of miles on American byways, and makes home up and down the I-5 to see found family, and in the Bay for research.
Rev. Redeem Robinson is an openly queer minister, political and civil rights activist, and former school board member. He started the Black Lives Matter Chapter in Tucson in 2015 and was involved in 2020 through his former congregation, Ebenezer Church during the George Floyd protest. In November of 2022, he was appointed to be a commissioner on the Los Angeles County Commission on HIV by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors where he brings his ten years of HIV/AIDS ministry experience to the table. Redeem has worked on many political campaigns for federal and statewide races and helped organize around immigrant rights, police accountability, voting rights, climate change, reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and the impeachment of Donald Trump with NextGen America's Need to Impeach campaign.
Blake Chastain is the host of the Exvangelical and Powers & Principalities podcasts, and writer of The Post-Evangelical Post newsletter. His first book, Exvangelical & Beyond: How American Christianity Went Radical and the Movement That's Fighting Back, was just published in September.
In Exvangelical and Beyond, Blake offers a critical history of the political ties in the rise of US evangelicalism, and how former evangelicals are finding progressive community to heal and fight back.
Blake coined the #exvangelical hashtag alongside the launch of the Exvangelical podcast in July 2016. Since then, exvangelical conversations and communities have proliferated online across social networks like Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit.
Know your enemy; know your future ally