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Sam Goldman interviews Anthea Butler, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, columnist for MSNBC and author of a new book, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America.

Anthea Butler: White Evangelical Racism

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"Evangelicals like authority and they like authoritarian power. People think of them as moral agents in society. They’re not. They’re agents of power who use morality in society. They’re playing a role of voter suppression. They’re playing a role in the pushback against critical race theory. All of these things come together to make for a fascist kind of movement. Most people don’t understand how much this could up-end a democracy. Some of their theologies and beliefs will help bring in fascism if we are not careful...

They really believe God called them to do this and this has been something that's been building for a long time. If people thought this was a surprise, it really wasn't because lots of churches and organizations were sort of rolling up to this. And if you couple this with the stop the steal language about this, they thought that they were on a holy quest and God called them to do this. But even more importantly than that, this is about Christian Nationalism and it's about a nationalism that's existed for a long time...It's been to our detriment as a public that we have, not paid attention to the ways in which violence and nationalism and patriotism have come together to make this kind of a very potent stew in the hands of someone like Donald Trump.

When you can say that Donald Trump was as a lot of evangelicals said, God's man. That he was King Cyrus. He was the one that was appointed and then you have that man who they think is, God's man saying that the election is stolen. Well, of course, people are going to go out there and and fight for him and do what they want, but I think it's it's a deeper problem about evangelicals...now they're religio-political actors who have set themselves up against the government and that's really important because they think God is more important than the government. Okay. So if you understand what they were doing on January 6, they really believe that God called them to take down the capitol and that they wanted to establish God's government and God's government was the representative was Donald Trump...I think you need to understand it and be fearful and mindful of the fact that although January 6 failed, you still have a lot of people out here who embrace that belief."

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