A Slow Civil War with Jeff Sharlet

The State Of Belief

The political climate in the last few weeks has left many feeling overwhelmed and scared, waiting for the next shoe to drop. The increasing collaboration of right-wing groups to rally around Project 2025 shows the threat of what the Christian nationalist right’s interpretation of the Bible - and of America - might look like in the future. For this week's episode of The State of Belief, Interfaith Alliance’s weekly radio show and podcast, host Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush is joined by author and journalist Jeff Sharlet to discuss his most recent book, and how we can come together in the face of the White supremacist militarized vision presented by Project 2025.

“Now the mainstream press is starting to pick up and report Project 2025. But they're still looking at it in traditional Washington terms, and not noticing what that project is, is really an attempt to merge Reaganism and Trumpism. But not so much to merge them, but to fully fold in the last vestiges of the right-wing Reaganite Republican Party into a full fascist Trumpist movement. And in that service, in terms of Christian nationalism, they lay out four pillars. [...] one is God and the family. Putting the family at the center of things. And it's astonishing and sad that in the United States, now, the word “family” has been claimed by the right. Everybody has one, but the right seems to think they own that word.”

-Jeff Sharlet, best-selling author of eight books, including The Family and C Street, which focus on the Christian nationalist forces deeply embedded in the halls of American power. His latest book, The Undertow: Scenes from A Slow Civil War, surveys the national landscape in the aftermath of Joe Biden's ascent to the White House. Jeff is Frederick Sessions Beebe '35 Professor in the Art of Writing at Dartmouth College. You can follow his writing on Substack.