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it's Ken harau on the Midas touch Network in our companion Series against all enemies we've been diving deep into the overt religiosity that has become a feature of mainstream Republican
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politics culminating in the election of Mike Johnson on a Partyline vote to become Speaker of the House speaker Johnson is a fundamentalist Christian who openly claims to have been chosen by
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God for his current role he has described America not as a democracy but as a biblical Republic and he was one of the Prime architects of the big lie that led to the January 6th Insurrection if
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you think I am exaggerating the degree to which speaker Johnson declares a divine right to rule check out the against all enemies video in which he says he was selected not by the votes of
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his peers but by the almighty to be America's Moses I'll put the link to that video in the notes below today we've got Frank schaer on the show to discuss how the religious right went so
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badly off the rails and took the Republican party with it Frank was born and raised in a hugely influential Conservative Christian family he has been described as Evangelical royalty I
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asked my friend darar Tucker to guest host this interview because she is especially familiar with both the Evangelical movement and Frank's work I think you're going to love this one
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thanks well welcome to burn the boats Frank schaer I'm so glad to have you here today likewise Dar thank you for being with me I I can't tell you how excited I am to talk
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to you specifically um you don't know me but I sort of I guess by association I know of you um quite well I I can't say that I've done the Deep dive on your work which is great because I like for
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conversations like this to feel fresh um and I think there are a lot of places that uh we're going to to have an interesting time going today because a lot of my history intersects with your history um even in the Evangelical world
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so um I will say that uh Frank schaer is an author how else would you describe yourself uh Frank I don't I don't want to to limit uh you can you can you tell the folks um just in in general how you
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how you think of yourself how you describe what you do sure well let me start by saying that at 71 with three grown children and a grandfather of five kids for whom I do
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Child Care these days and I'm not trying to be cute I I don't really think of myself as either an author or a speaker or commentator all those things I've done for a living um after doing this interview
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with you the other important date I have today is 3M pickup for my nine-year-old granddaughter that I do every day what I will be cooking for her this afternoon and this evening the child care I'll do for her um taking my 15-year-old
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granddaughter to lunch this weekend and the fact that my wife jeie survived a heart attack two years ago and is doing so well and asked me to open a bottle of red wine this morning so she could get a cup of red wine for the French onion
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soup she's making because she likes to cook too that's actually who I am now if you're asking me about bio type stuff I guess I would say that I grew up in a famous Evangelical
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household that the New York Times once described as Evangelical royalty and I left that in the after having become believe it or not a nepotistic sidekick Evangelical leader myself to my father
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Francis schaer in the 1970s and 80s we made a series of movies that became very famous on the Evangelical and conservative Roman Catholic circuit because one series called whatever happened to the human race was really
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the foundation of the Evangelical anti-abortion movement in the 70s and 80s and so when I fled that movement I became persona non grada to those folks um I I have been a writer uh oh I don't
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know for 35 40 years now I've written five novels and a whole bunch of non-fiction including a memoir called crazy for God which I guess gets used in a lot of University history courses these days because they feel that
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perhaps it's a good description of the formation of the religious right and how and why it took over the Republican party as part of my own family history so I'm I'm sort of an odd person I'm a
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writer self-employed type of guy uh I'm a commentator I have a podcast called in conversation with Frank Schaefer and um I interview a lot of people just like you're interviewing me I'm actually so
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much so now that these days um you know I I used to do a lot of interviews when people like you were interviewing me and I still do media I show up on on Joy Reed's show from time to time on MSNBC
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and all that kind of thing but um I'm very very comfortable interviewing people um I love conversations just like you do and I probably interview one or two people one or two authors a week on in conversation with Frank Schaefer and
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they range from everybody from former rock stars like Moby to uh well-known authors or to just some young person who's doing something interesting um and all all points in between and I guess
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I'll just wrap by saying that of Late by necessity and not by choice I've SP a lot of time commenting on what's happened to the Republican party and becoming part of the Trump cult for which my family Bears some
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responsibility not for Trump but for the direction of the party and its extremism um and I guess uh besides the child care I'm doing the other overriding concern I have is to try to
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undo some of the damage my family did in making the Republican Party more of a far-right radical Fringe movement that finally turned into the Trump cult uh and and as I worry about the future
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for my family and my grandchildren it provides a motivation to really deal with subjects that are really distasteful to me I'd much rather just be in the kitchen cooking something with my wife or taking care of the
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children at 71 you don't have so much to prove and uh but but we're in we're in a fix right now and I guess if you love anybody in this life you you try to protect them and I do my best to undo
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some of the damage we did I don't know if that rambling crazy intro helps you or not but that's the best shot I can do this morning well yeah it provides I think a good base a good basis for kind of the
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launching point for this conversation I will tell you a little bit about myself as it relates to you and to your your father I uh went to a school called or Roberts University in Tulsa Oklahoma and
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I'm trying to remember the department head's name for the Humanities courses that we were all forced um to take at Oru but they heavily emphasized the
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humanities because of a specific couple that was there that headed up that program that they were huge admirers of your father and they watched all of his films they were I think they were catholic probably uh which was a little
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bit unusual to you know to choose a a Catholic couple to head up a Humanities department at an Evangelical University like old Roberts University in Tulsa Oklahoma but they were hugely influential on that program and so we
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watched your dad's films for four years we all had to do four years of the humanities and it was a notoriously hated program partly because of these films I hate to say uh Frank because of
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these films of your dads called how should we then live um and they they appealed to me on an intellectual level I I appreciated the intellectualism of these films uh but they were at the
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point point that I went to school in the 90s they were old and they were crackly and you know he he dressed sort of funny and quirky and he spoke in very you know aidite language and a lot of people just they hated them
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frankly um but they were hugely influential on I think the the thought formation for a lot of people you know like me that really did plug in and that did care um and that sought to sort of
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expand their knowledge and it was all presented very intellectually um for some of us who had grown up I grew up as the child of of a minister music Minister my father was a music Minister and a preacher and he came out
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of the Holiness Pentecostal church and he ended up kind of uh shifting to more of a Word of Faith charismatic uh Pentecostal Evangelical uh kind of world so I grew up with one foot in both of those worlds
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Holiness Pentecostal and then the Evangelical movement and so we were very much a part of um you know the the byproduct or the result of the work that both you and your father um had done I
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was a kid in the 80s when that whole push towards um political activism within the church was really blossoming Reagan was in in office and uh we were
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all being encouraged I I remember a lot of chatter around you know we have to get out there and mobilize and get out of the Pew and get into the voting booth and it was just it was becoming a whole thing in large part due to the work of
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your father so I kind of want to talk first about the uh the foundational stuff I really actually want to start our conversation with um your comments
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on the uh the appointing or the election of Mike Johnson to the House of Representatives and then I kind of want to backtrack and talk about uh your history and helping to um kind of
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establish this movement in the US that has basically led to the point where we are now which is the the appointing of Mike Johnson as Speaker of the House can you talk to me about why uh why we
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should be particularly concerned about um his election specifically well you've got a lot of stuff there um and I was also I I also have a German degree and lived in
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Switzerland by the way which I think is is at least partly where you grew up GRE up there where where were you in Switzerland I was in interlockin and what were youing there I was trying to learn German a
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little bit better not realizing that the um the schit that they spoke in Switzerland was not it didn't really have anything to do with high German um but I I majored in international business and German studies at Earl Roberts University so I wanted to learn
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the German language better so I I oped there for a year after I graduated you don't mind me early early 2000s like oh 03 I think I was there okay yeah yeah well okay so let me let me backtrack a
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little and I will jump into into the Mike Johnson Point here if I wander pull me back to it uh my history with u goes back to the day when you know we were there speaking
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and I remember being on campus I knew Richard Roberts I knew Oral Roberts I was there in the 70s and the 80s they brought my dad I think twice um the Roberts family were very flaky and
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they've had all sorts of criminal indictments since the Son and the father died but you know even back in the day we kind of them regarded them uh as as that uh and most evangelicals did and
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then then the university sort of became a little more respectable and had people teaching there who were serious about the academic Pursuit I guess by the time you got there the Roberts Family itself
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was less of a thing but back in the day U is a real outlier with its Prayer Tower and or or oral raising money saying that he would die three days later unless he got the money that God
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had shown him he needed you know there were things that um were odd okay so that's just water under the bridge but but um when it gets to to Mike Johnson um
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there's a connection there personally as well unfortunately when it comes to him I actually know what I'm talking about and I'm not bsing I I mean that because I know the people that formed and shaped
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him I know who he follows I know Tony Perkins of the family research Council and and Ralph Reed and Franklin Graham these are three people who discipled and
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mentored um him they all three of them are not very closeted pretty out in the open Reconstructionist theonomous following a movement that was started by ruses rashduni in the 60s and 70s who I
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also knew well stayed with for a week one time in California and the reconstructionists believe that the Constitution of the United States was a big bad mistake they actually agree with a lot of more
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secular uh commentators um when it comes to politics because they admit that as a document it was not the founding of a Christian country but rather the document owes its influence in terms of
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the rights of individuals etc etc to the French Enlightenment and before that the Italian Renaissance exactly what they hate most because that's where to use their terminology secular humanism was born so when it
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came to R rashduni and when I tell people this they they don't believe me but I sat with him and he told me these things personally and then wrote down 23 volumes of a huge magisterial work he
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did that's unreadable and goes on forever but in which he argues for the reintroduction of the slavery the slave trade you heard that right he argues for
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the public execution of gay people homosexuality being forbidden in the Old Testament he regards the US Constitution as a bastardized slippage away from the vision of the Bay State colony and
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winthrip and the others who knew what to do with people like the peat Indians when they burn them alive and Rush dun's vision would be literally actually aligned with for
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instance right now as I speak to you today the West Bank settlers in Israel who feel they have a Godly mandate to return to the Old Testament borders of Israel and
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prosecute a a land stealing and if necessary genocidal war against Palestinians I'm not talking about Gaza and the war there I'm talking about the West Bank Orthodox Jewish
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settlers who uncoincidentally are supported by Mike haggy of Houston who's an enormous Pentecostal preacher there believing in the end times has a church of thousands of mega church his whole
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stick is taking tour groups to Israel waiting for the return of Jesus he's the one that pushed Trump to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem there's an entire thing there um but is
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this is this is this John haggy or is this you're speaking of his son as no this is this is heggy the preacher I I may have got did I mix the name up did I say Mike Mike I just didn't
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know half of my head is trying to get back to your question Mike we're taking a little circuitous path here but the thing is what people need to understand about Mike Johnson and why I'm talking at length about Russ Doney and the
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Christian Zionist movement etc etc is that's the wing of evangelicalism he comes from and was shaped by so you have to understand the first thing you've got to understand with Mike Johnson is that when the media is shocked by him talking
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about resending gay marriage rights what they don't understand is that's his toned down public Persona that he will allow you to see what Mike really believes because I know Tony Perkins who
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mentored Mike as his most influential person Mike also read my dad's books and was influenced by them but what what Mike believes and what Tony Perkins and these other people believe that in the
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best of all worlds we would no longer be a democracy but a theocracy period and and the media finds this so far-fetched in the same way they found it far-fetched that Trump could
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beat Hillary Clinton until the minute he did right okay remember what that was like nobody thought he could win um nobody takes seriously the idea of the American white National theocracy
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movement because to them it's so far-fetched they don't know anybody like that I grew up with these people and I knew them personally the leaders that guys like Johnson now follow so he he
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really bad news because he's the third in line to the presidency he's two heartbeats away from sitting in the Oval Office if he was in the O Oval Office we would not only have an enemy of democracy but we would have an actual
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proponent of theocracy those proponents are already in in our government for instance Amy cone Barrett who was groomed and raised and spent her whole life and is still a member of a
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cult uh that even is far-fetched for conservative Catholics she also is a theocrat and and these folks think tactically they will take two steps forward then one step back so they cond
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duct the extremism label but in the best of all worlds our country the United States of America would fall somewhere between Iran and and the Roman Catholicism of the 12th century in
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Europe and that's where we would be on abortion women's rights child rearing corporal punishment all the way down by the way with rash Juni believed in beating children and preached it um and all the rest of it so the the wing of
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the Republican Party shaped by evangelicals the Trump cult has various parts to it and I'm almost done here one part of it is super extreme back in my
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day when we were advocating for things we were never that extreme my dad did not like rashduni he said he was non-Christian in his views dad believed in democracy by the way agree or disagree with his views on aard
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he liked our democratic system and he thought it was part of the fruit of both Christianity and the enlightenment he actually admitted and knew his history Rush ji did too but said we we need to push for Old Testament law to be
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resubscribed to and that is where the extreme wing of the Republican party is today not all Republicans and it just so happens that in my day we were Outsiders looking in even with our water down
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version of this so people like Ronald Reagan who we knew and the and both Bush presidents who we knew and all those folks and people like Jack Kemp who was a congressman and then vice presidential candidate with Bob Dole and so forth
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whose home I used to stay in none of them bought into any of this but they regarded us as necessary idiots to Pander to with abortion and all the rest of it to get our vote fast forward to
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today and this really is the end of my little speech here Johnson is not just as Extreme as we were he's far more extreme and was
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groomed by people far more extreme than my father but and here's the big kicker he's not an outside agitator looking in he's an absolute sincere believer unlike
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Trump who believes nothing except in his own power Johnson's an absolute sincere believer now totally on the inside with views that are far more extreme than the
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agitators of the religious right that we were part of so we've come completely full circle and and now what we've got is really something and I don't think so
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far I've read nothing from people in the popular media who seem to get what this theology is about and have done any leg work at all to find out who who his influence uh who has influenced him I
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happen to know so it's not um Pleasant knowledge but it's real I'm not making it up well I've you know I do a series of videos that I call the breakdown on my
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socials on my social media that's kind of what I'm I'm a singer by trade but I've sort of shifted into a bit of online activism and so this has kind of been a whole other Ro that has opened up to me and I feel like I speak from a
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very specific and unique point of view as being first of all a black woman and someone who's raised in the Evangelical world and someone who has sort of deconstructed which is the new terminology that we're using and um back
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as you say my day it was called just being rebellious my my grandmother was a Pentecostal pastor and so for me to shift and move away from you know a lot of these this traditional thinking
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fundamentalist thinking um in my sect is is seen as a very controversial thing but I feel like it gives me a very specific point of view to be able to step back and get a bird's eye view and and evaluate and analyze some of this
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stuff um as a former Insider um and so that it it just has exposed me to a lot that I feel um allows me to avoid the maybe dismissive
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way that a lot of people discuss um Christian nationalism um I wasn't necessarily at the heart of the the white Christian nationalism part of it um I feel like with Oral Roberts
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University specifically there was a difference in the way that that that he that that University developed versus uh Liberty University which is was Jerry FWS University and I do want to talk to you
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about Paul wrick and Jerry fwell and um cett Coupe and some of the other kind of founding fathers of this this um modern-day nationalist movement Christian nationalist movement but the way that old Roberts University
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developed versus uh Jerry falwell's Liberty University which I think is that Virginia where Liberty is yes um that started out as a segregationist university libert university did versus
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um or Roberts University which you know I feel my understanding of how that that uh School developed it was with much more of a focus on integration and um just the mindset was completely I want
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to say completely different but there were a lot of differences in the mindset Jerry fwell when I really started to study some of the history of what began as Lynchberg Baptist College and what is
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now Liberty University I've done videos on this like I said in these breakdowns that I do little many documentaries on Tik Tok and on Instagram and have tried to help people to understand you know more of the foundation of where all of
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this comes from uh but Liberty University began as a segregationist college and not a lot of people understand that and I kind of I recoiled I was talking to a friend of mine that I went to U with uh just yesterday or a
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couple days ago and she was talking about sending her her child to Liberty University and I just inside I just I started to clinch up because I'm like man we don't know we don't understand we don't know what the real history is
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there um so I would like for you to kind of explain briefly if you could the relationship between your father Francis schaer and people like C ever Coupe uh Jerry fwell Paul Wyrick who really were
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at the heart they were at the the foundation of the modern of the Contemporary um Evangelical you know nationalist movement or the push towards involving Christians more in the
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political process because that wasn't happening um I've done a video about how a lot of a lot of the foundation of this started even with um these segregationist schools like Lynchberg College Liberty University and that um
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the requirement with Brown versus Board of Education that these schools integrate and that was a huge mobilizing Factor but kind of talk to me if you can I know this is a very it's a just a broad subject but if you can give me kind of a just a a nutshell version of
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of of the relationship between these men in the 60s and 70s I guess it would be well you know I it it's going to seem weird to keep saying I knew these guys personally but you know I I did um and
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you keep going back to a past era that I was part of as the young nepotistic sidekick of a famous Evangelical leader an intellectual and you know I was tagging along I wrote and directed the
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movies that you were talking about both how should we then live which I produced and directed uh many of the episodes of and then I wrote and directed the entirety of whatever happened to the human race of CER Coupe based on their
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book and as such I was part of a traveling circus that went out on seminar tours around the country and filled stadiums with the first series and the second series on abortion
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actually was a financial dis disaster at the beginning because and this is something I you may or may not know about but our fight was not with the National Organization of Women and and
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naral and other prot tourist groups it was with the evangelicals who were pro-choice starting with Reverend Billy Graham the famous evangelist and with Dr chriswell Who was president of the Southern Baptist convention that doesn't
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get any more right-wing white and Southern Baptist than that and also president of of Dallas Baptist Theological Seminary these guys were pro-choice pro-choice not ambivalent on
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abortion they thought it should be legal nobody in today's discussion you don't hear that you would think that abortion was like contraceptives have always been to the Roman Catholics forever that it
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was sort of part of the fabric of EV angelical teaching it was not so in 1976 or 77 when we brought the second series out on abortion whatever Happ human race we were playing to empty stadiums where
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four years before with how should we then live we sold out the grand old opery we sold out uh Madison Square Garden we sold out Dallas Convention Center sold out literally every seat
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taken and Dad hadn't Fallen away in popularity we showed up with a movie on abortion it's like what's that got to do with us and and we had to fight an entire battle for instance with the editors of Christianity Today magazine
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who refused to endorse it with Billy Graham whom dad and I sat down with three times at the Mayo Clinic where he was getting some treatment at the time begging him to jump on board these were all people who had lined up behind the
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first series the one you didn't like uh in college no I liked it you're not getting your money back okay um I loved it actually yeah all right but anyway what I'm saying is that the first little
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footnote I want to share with you as a fly on the wall who was actually there so this isn't Theory because I actually sat in Billy's hot hospital room at the
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Methodist Hospital in the Mayo Clinic saying Billy why don't you you know and and the best we could get is his wife Ruth helped found a Crisis Pregnancy Center three years later sort of joined our team so to speak but these are
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family friends that went back years like Franklin I met Franklin first when we were both nine years old I we knew the Grahams Gigi Graham still takes me to breakfast anytime I'm in town near the Billy Graham Center where she works
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she's an old friend of mine we're both in our well she's pushing 80 now you know the these are all real connections so I I was there all right in that context Paul wrick came along met with
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me in Washington DC and with Dad and he was into Direct Mail raising money for right-wing activists he knew Jerry fwell he was a radical Roman Catholic and actually part sort of like Amy con
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Barrett of a side of a a cult that was rebelling against Vatican uh the the the you know the Vatican where they went from Latin Mass to in English all those
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changes that that happened um coming out of the Vatican and he he wanted it all back in Latin and you know this this guy you know for him the best part of History was in the 12th century and it was downhill ever after he was very
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political very anti-abortion um and he saw Jerry fall while floundering around having had his school integrated as you rightly pointed out forced to integrate Jerry was
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looking for a new issue because how do you keep stoking the rage machine when you've lost a big battle on race and and he knew that wouldn't fly anymore so he set a sites on two things the uh what he
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called the homosexual conspiracy which was the Rising uh P not power so much but the visibility of the gay rights movement and women feminism women should stay in
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the home women shouldn't work and as a part of that traditionalism of course the abortion issue came along and at first Jerry like everybody else uh that i' had been talking to it's like well
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this isn't a Catholic thing isn't it and you got to understand when I grew up Catholics weren't saved they weren't real Christians only we were real Christians m bought Bible believing evangelicals we were the true church Catholics weren't
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even saved so it wasn't just a Catholic issue it was an issue with people that we didn't even regard as fellow Travelers they they might as well have been Hindus as far as we were concerned when I say was a child uh my parents
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shifted later out of I guess some growth but also political expediency well anyway wrick went to Jerry fwell so I knew Jerry um when we were flying around the country for the seminar tour he lent
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us his jet and so we would fly around the country in his jet and then I spoke at Liberty University twice um to the whole student body and then once from
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the pulpit of the church um and came away from that experience even in my rightwing phase despising fwell because he was one of the meanest
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people I've ever met and his sons and he were just straight out con artist thieves they were designing vast clever fundraising programs I'll just give you one example getting obituary notices
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about all their donors widows uh collecting them and writing a quote personal letter just happening to mention that your husband or your wife fill in the blank had promised a major donation before their death and I know
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that Harry would love to be remembered that way um so much so that my friend Cal Thomas who was then presid president of the Moral Majority quit working with Jerry fwell because of his disagreement
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with these sleazy tactics so this family in addition to being segregationist follow was genuinely the scum of the earth because I don't know what he actually believed in his heart but I remember just before I went on to speak
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at his from his pulpit in Liberty Baptist Church that we were in his study and he had been talking about um how much money he was Raising because someone had cut the guy wires on one of their
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transmission towers and he was saying the homosexuals did it and he said oh so far we've raised three times the cost of the tower because as soon as you throw out the word and he used the f word to
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describe them yeah all my people donate and then literally as I was stepping out of the door of his little office behind the pulpit not his big Swanky office just the little cubby hole where you
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change actually on the way to his Pulpit he looked at me and he said said and you know you know what I think and I saidwell what do you think he says well if I had a dog that did what those fword do I'd shoot it and that was the last
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thing he said to me as he as I transitioned to the pulpit to speak and he introduced me with this big happy I love everybody grin and turned on a totally different kind of charm so 30
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seconds before I could have been talking literally talking to a Nazi in Germany in 1938 and 10 seconds later he's introducing the son of Francis schaer who will be our speaker today with his smarmy sorry
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for the English here but for with his smarmy eating grin and that was him fwell wasn't that you know so F people often ask me about some of these leaders I knew um were
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they flakes are they thieves did they believe anything and all I can tell you with Jerry Jr who's a thief as well as a philander hypocrite
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the Apple did not far far from the tree and that is this whole pool boy thing whatever the fwell family is a disaster and Liberty University is is a disaster because of that all kinds of stuff from
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contemporary students about the way sexual assault reports get buried the way they are bullied into not reporting malfant on the school the amount of money that has gone into the fwell
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family from so-called nonprofit 5013c University education group the way they have done real estate deals with properties ad joining so that they can personally profit you know th this is
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one of the sleaziest families that I've ever run up against in any Walk of Life and I worked in Hollywood as a director and I know all kinds of people but there is nobody worse than the fall W land Oral Roberts not that way Oral Roberts
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was just a good old Pentecostal preacher I think he believed every single word he said he also was very canny when it came to fundraising very flaky from the point of view of whatever but you know there
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wasn't a mean b bone in his body I'm just talking about my own impressions of people I knew when it comes to Paul wrick he was just an operator and he didn't particularly care for any of these people he was a radical
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old-fashioned Roman Catholic who review who viewed these Protestants as Heretics necessary evil to work with to bring about his sort of um version of a kind of a Recon instructionist version of
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Catholicism where you know he was going to move the country in the right direction and get us on abortion and all the rest so that he could get Republicans elected and want he you know he wanted to move the whole country to the far right so he used these guys so
00:34:42
basically you know we we were hanging around with people back in the day who just who who who were you know a very mixed bag of people but the result was that fwell in the end decided that there
00:34:53
was money to be made in the energy of the pro-life movement once we got it going and then he he saw fundraising opportunities in stirring the pot again and again of the kind of anger machine
00:35:07
send me 25 bucks and I can you know push these secular humanists back and the Liberals and the Democrats they just repeated it repeated repeated it they would throw all kinds of issues up against the wall and if something stuck
00:35:21
then they would latch on and abortion would not have worked for them without our film series which they then capital ized on and once it started becoming a thing they got in on the act before that
00:35:32
you never heard a word about abortion from fwell or any of these guys it was all segregation and and uh things like that when that didn't work they looked for other things and then they focused on two things gay rights and women's
00:35:44
rights and as part of fighting back against women's rights they took a quote stand on abortion you know once they were able to figure out that they could raise money that way and they you know they they
00:35:57
their inheritors of the movement are still doing it today and of course in the end that's why Rog got reversed and all the rest and Jerry and Jerry's final Legacy I guess you could say is the Trump
00:36:10
[Music] presidency thanks for watching everyone I am trying something new a patreon page it's a way you can support the show and make sure we can keep bringing you this
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00:40:08
of little mini explainers little mini docs and storytelling online around um a lot of this around a lot of topics but this is one of my my topics that I that I like to talk about and I've started a
00:40:21
series called toxic conservatism just kind of getting into some of the the history and the the why the foundational kind of elements as to why we have ended up in the place that we've ended up um
00:40:34
and one of my my passions as I said is to have these conversations with other conservatives and to not not sort of leave them out of the conversation like Hey we're gonna we're going to Camp up
00:40:46
over here we're going to Silo ourselves and aren't those people so crazy it is a passion of mine to to sort of pull them into the conversation because I think that that absolutely needs to happen and one of in one of the videos I did
00:40:59
recently um I talked about how how they have played the long game they've been playing this game for as you said this has been groundwork that's laid for 50 years to take down Row versus weight and that's not their only goal and so some
00:41:13
of the difficulty that I have in in having these conversations with my family many of whom are still very uh very religiously and politically conservative and friends and people I went to school with like I said at Oru
00:41:25
um it's a difficult thing sometimes to have conversations with other conservatives um or people that I you know that that um were were my world for most of my life it's difficult to have
00:41:37
conversations with them about the dangers of this movement because ideologically and morally they line up with a lot of what's going on right now so it's difficult to help them to
00:41:49
understand the danger of the the the political element or the political thrust of this movement so can can you kind of from your point of view um do you attempt to have those conversations with conservatives or is it your point
00:42:02
of view that hey we've just we've got to know kind of where we stand and let them come to us if they're willing or able to do that or do you is that reach out element and an important part of the
00:42:14
work that you do and there's no wrong answer here I just I kind of want to understand from your point of view um are you are you Evangelical I guess in your your um your discussions around this I the answer to that is yes and no
00:42:27
yes in the sense that for instance um I visit back in Switzerland when I return the ministry I am friends with the people who are there now I've stayed
00:42:39
there and talked with them um some of my family is still involved in that Ministry and I have what what part of Switzerland in the French speaking part of Switzerland near Monto loan if you know where the montro jazz festival is
00:42:52
it's 20 minutes from there oh yeah yeah down by Lake maneva uh it's not actually on the lake it's up in the mountains but you know 20 minute driveway um so it's this this the French speaking part of
00:43:03
switzland very near the Italian border down there by the lake so that's where I grew up so I go back and I talk with them uh when it comes to Evangelical type Media or things like that obviously
00:43:16
I was a h you know like my dad back in the day when I was publishing and so forth I was well known in those circles I never hear from any of those people because I've just sort of died to them
00:43:27
but with my podcast my producer Ernie Greg and I have been reaching out to um you know what I'll call reasonable conservative authors and others who I
00:43:40
would have fundamental disagreements with but they're not trumpists um and they're not particularly Evangelical and um I have been interviewing a number of them and we're actually booking a couple more so
00:43:52
when you look at my podcast it's not left-wing liberals all the way down um there are some thoughtful uh writer commentator type people um from the right from what you
00:44:06
might call the the sane right for instance the head of the history Department from Notre Dame University I interviewed him we had a wonderful discussion um and he's written a book looking at you know all sorts of areas
00:44:18
that I agree in some disagree with some but we've had a real discussion and they've been you know and I've asked him to offer me some other names of people I can talk to so yes yes I am making an effort to use whatever platform I have
00:44:30
to talk to people um and to discuss with them and not attack them just okay you've written a book let's talk about it I do the same on the left by the way I have I have all kinds of interviews with people on the left who are f i to
00:44:45
say further left than me is not a good description but to say um take views kind of an absolutism and certainty about certain things on social issues I'm not talking about abortion I'm
00:44:57
hardly pro-choice but uh you know so so I'll talk to people to the left of me to the right of me all points in between I make every
00:45:09
effort to do so when it comes to my my own uh podcast personal relationships I've done what I can to maintain folks who are still in the ministry that my parents founded Lis Fellowship to the
00:45:21
extent it's possible um when it comes to the Evangelical community in general I would never be invited to speak and none of them would ever peer on anything with me because that would Blacklist them you know that they're there goes
00:45:34
their next invitation to speak at Wheaten College hey he was on Frank schaer's podcast forget it it would be kind of a a strike against them so you know I don't know if that answers your question but that's that's kind of where I'm at on
00:45:47
it well I guess just in theory what what how would you talk to someone I'll ask it in that way how would you speak to someone about the danger of the Christian nationalist movement
00:45:59
someone who is Christian or someone who does consider themselves to be Evangelical how would you have that conversation with them about the dangers of the the you know a Mike Johnson or a Marjorie Taylor green or the many other
00:46:12
figures now that are populating our political landscape why are these people uh folks that we should be wary of that we should look out for that we should be concerned about I mean isn't this just a wonderful thing if these people are
00:46:24
representing our morality uh on the political stage isn't this just a great thing why is this something to be concerned about you know I don't know I don't have a a magic formula here but I would just say I think on a personal
00:46:38
level I would start talking about some of the hypocrisy of just the the way the whole movement operates the money the greed the the power hunger it in it how
00:46:50
far away from anything that could be called basically Christlike I would really get into the Weeds on that in other words whether I buy into those beliefs anymore myself which is a different discussion and I'm happy to go
00:47:02
there if you want to in this interview that's a different topic but I but I grew up in it and I know the language and I also know what for instance my parents believed and I might tell them a little bit of my own story they might
00:47:14
say well you left the movement were you bitter against your parents you know they're always making up these reasons that would fit their idea I'd say no it's actually quite the reverse before my father got famous as Evangelical
00:47:26
writer it was a very humble little Ministry dad worked on the a tray on the corner of his bed in a rocking chair he didn't have a desk he didn't have a secretary we didn't have a car the only meat we ever got was on the weekends mother would make roast chicken for
00:47:39
Sunday with rice and gravy and that's we shared that with the students who were staying with us and the thing that began my journey out of the movement you're still part of speaking to you as if you were in one of
00:47:51
these people you know what you've heard you know that I'm angry or bitter it's all lies I mean actually read my books you'll see they're not angry and bitter my secular editors think they're very loving and nice portraits of of a
00:48:04
something I left and interesting but if you really want to know what began my journey out of your movement it was comparing the humility the kindness and the lack of greed the
00:48:17
Christlike behavior of my mom and dad and how they treated people in our ministry and why people became Christians in that Ministry it was because they actually were trying to follow Christ and my own Journey out of
00:48:31
the movement is as I got well known and my father got well known and I began to meet the leaders of what then mutated into the religious right the flakes the thieves the meanness the the bitterness
00:48:43
the personality Cults everything that became trumpism in the end was already there and the reason Trump was able to mislead so many people is he was actually so much like their own leaders
00:48:56
it was all about the money it was all about the power they were all Hypocrites that's why I got out of the movement it was the opposite of what you think I left because I had grown up seeing what
00:49:08
genuine Christlike kindness was like I remember my mom down on her hands and knees in the kitchen mopping up the vomit from a heroin addict that my parents had taken in didn't throw her
00:49:21
out she was a young British musician who was on heroin she would go into the woods and shoed up she vomited in our kitchen and my mother cleaned the vomit up and sat her down and made her a cup of tea did they kick her out no because
00:49:33
my parents believed that they were reaching out to lost people not just in a theological sense but that really that's how you treat people and the same with the gay couples who came to libis this is in the 50s and 60s integration
00:49:46
my father opened lebis up in 1966 to 60 students from sopia University in bulgar area all of whom were African students
00:49:59
from Nigeria and all these places on communist scholarships they could come to Switzerland because it was a neutral country it was the only country in Europe they could visit because it was not in NATO while they were in a communist East
00:50:12
block school and dad had them all come for the summer this is in the the mid to late 60s and that's who was there that summer was all these African
00:50:26
students my father performed um a quote interracial marriage with one of them and a young English woman that they had met preached a sermon saying that unlike people in
00:50:38
America evangelicals he knew that he had left in 1947 he believed in interracial marriage and by the way if one of my daughters falls in love with one of our African students I would be delighted to
00:50:52
have her marry a black man this is in the mid-60s that was my father and then as I began to tour around and met people like Jerry fwell it's as if I had fallen into a
00:51:03
Vortex of another planet my leaving the Evangelical movement was in disgust not with the politics but with the UN Christlike behavior that I witnessed on a leadership level Across
00:51:16
the Nation I didn't run into people like my parents I did meet some individual humble kind people but the leadership was in the money the power and they were liars and my parents were truthful and
00:51:29
kind people now you can disagree with where they went on abortion You can disagree on where we the people that we worked with and say well why would you work with people like that Dad regarded them as kind of necessary evil people
00:51:42
like Jerry fwell because you know we're trying to spread our message okay that's a different question but why did Frank Schaefer begin asking a series of questions that eventually let him out of the movement because I had seen the real
00:51:54
thing and what we were now part of was a lie and that's how I started out so what I would tell you is have you ever stop back to think how far the movement
00:52:06
you're still part of speaking to you as if you were one of these people the movement you're still part of has traveled from what your own ideals used to be can you remember what it was like
00:52:18
to be really in love with Jesus can you remember what it was like to really get up every day trying to treat other people as your neighbor and if you can do you think your movement is there
00:52:29
now think about it that's my maybe where I would start and it wouldn't be in a big public speech Just oneon-one that's where I'd begin I understand the frustrations I understand
00:52:42
how annoying the secular left has become believe me I've had it with the The Virtue signaling all the gender correctness in language I have no idea where all this comes from from I'm tired of it it looks
00:52:56
orwellian to me too there's a lot I can agree with you on in terms of the extremes on the left but let's just start with who Jesus was and where your ideals were say as a child with your
00:53:08
parents who were ministers or whatever it might be do you really think this is what is represented now by the Republican party that you you're now part of I don't so I don't hold up the
00:53:21
left and the Democrats as the kind of Paradigm of virtue I think the virtue signaling the greenwashing all the rest of it is all real I'm sick and tired of all the messing around with the English
00:53:32
language to to Virtue signal I think the left is totally hypocritical on a lot of things I'm willing to go there in the discussions but I think the real place to start is the degradation of the
00:53:43
ideals that so many evangelicals grew up with and now what are you settling for AR-15s guns all the way down armed resistance of the US government no funding for social programs Family
00:53:56
Values what family values where where's the where's the year of Parental leave for every child born where is the help that young mothers get where's the Practical love that my parents showed people in lb when they opened their home
00:54:09
to Mother young women who came pregnant who had been thrown out of their homes by Evangelical pastors and my mom said you can come stay with us that's what Ministry looked like to
00:54:20
me and when I began to hit the big time in America my eyes open and it was like this is rotten to the core and by the way it's also ruining my marriage because basically I'm being
00:54:34
groomed to be an by Divine Right another Power hungry jerk On The Fringe of this thing bossing his wife around over disciplining his children coming home Angry off the road and my own
00:54:46
Journey as a human being was so opposite of everything that I grew up believing in with my parents that I had to look at myself very very hard that's why I got out of the movement and then of course you start asking questions the whole
00:55:00
thing eventually unravels that's a different discussion so those are some of the places that I talk individually with people and once in a while you meet someone who listens a lot of the time the Evangelical
00:55:13
rightwing is so hardened now that it's literally like trying to talk somebody in Germany out of being in the Nazi party in 1940 the the bridge has been crossed and then burned kind of over but when it
00:55:27
comes to individuals you can still try what I guess in the kind of closing minutes of this this talk what do you feel I guess are are the the strategies
00:55:42
that the um the rest of us I don't even necessarily want to say the left but the but those of us who are are not are not willing to go along with this this agenda what are the strategies that we can engage in I mean one of the things things that I've I've discovered in the
00:55:56
research that I've done for the explainer videos and things that I do is is is how well-funded this this um the right is that whole movement is they are so well organized and so well funded and
00:56:09
you know so many of these political action commit committees and think takes and that you know the Heritage Foundation we could go on and on and on now moms for Liberty and all these groups who are just they're organizing I like to say like little worker bees
00:56:22
below the surface and just when you see roie Wade come down that that that wasn't something that was just planned for a year or two this is something that has been in development for for decades they're playing the long game and I have
00:56:36
never felt like the left or progressives have been nearly as well uh has have been nearly as knowledgeable about what is going on on the right as they should be or have been nearly as as organized
00:56:49
or or well funded and maybe that's just my my perception maybe that's my overestimating the power of of this this other side because I've been so connected to it or aware of it for so long but what can progressives what can
00:57:02
the left do to make sure that they are sort of preemptively kind of getting ahead of some of the stuff rather than always reacting to it you know I I am this is unlike the other topic where I
00:57:15
was there and I can tell you exactly what I think this is just you know me private citizen uh casting about for ideas but one thing I would say is the the left doesn't miserable job of
00:57:28
prioritizing and and you know we keep serving our head on a platter to the opposition you're totally right about the organizational function of the right and the long-term 50-year program it's not a conspiracy it's just a plan that
00:57:40
worked and the funding there from people like the Koch brothers and others and now new little wrinkle as some of these libertarian Tech Bros throw their money into the fry like Elon Musk for instance
00:57:53
who now describes himself as a Republican and who knows how much he's going to throw into the the fight coming up in the next election to put Donald Trump back in the White House you know there's a new there's a new kid in town
00:58:06
and these these billionaires don't have any limit on spending they're going to make the old funding of the the right-wing look like you know the coch brothers look like a Sunday school picnic because you know these are people
00:58:17
who can take $44 billion and drop it into a vanity project like buying Twitter for the hell of it and then side that uh Republicans are Li more favorable toward Libertarians who don't want to be
00:58:30
regulated by any aspect of the US government at all and throw their money into it because Corporate America actually has more power than the government now and these guys know that because they're part of that structure
00:58:43
so that's a new thing but other than that I think you're totally right in terms of the long-term funding and I think the only thing that the left can do to counter this is to be a lot smarter when it comes to prioritizing
00:58:55
what we want to be talking about and right now me personally all I want to be talking about is that there's only one issue that should bother or mean anything to anybody right now who I think is sane or
00:59:10
patriotic just throw the net wide and that is we cannot have a trump second term or we will move from a democracy to an authoritarian system from which back
00:59:21
there there will not be a way back and so this is like you know want to talk about the environment forget it the environmental movement is dead if Trump becomes president want to talk about gay rights
00:59:35
or trans rights forget it pronouns is not the issue to to even spend 10 seconds on trying to correct people in terms of pronouns right now is ridiculous the
00:59:48
house is burning down we're we're facing cataclysm so I guess right now now between now and the election day coming up in
00:59:58
2024 my message to anybody who's not a trumpist right-wing magga loving cultist in other words anybody but that whether they're republican or democrat or left-wing or black or white
01:00:12
or lesbian or gay or trans or heterosexual or a grandfather or a young parent or high school student is only one thing forget everything except the next election
01:00:25
and don't do anything to distract from that fight because this is the only thing that matters right now why because nothing else you care about will be the same the day after if Trump's back in
01:00:37
the White House and you will have lost every battle you're spending your time worrying about now say trans rights or other gender issues or the future of gay marriage all of which I
01:00:50
believe in by the way race relations forget it defund or and fund the police not an issue nothing nothing matters if we lose
01:01:02
this fight so is that alarmist yeah you damn straight it's alarmist because this is the time to sound the alarm I'm 71 I've been in this a long time and there's never never ever
01:01:16
in my lifetime been anything approached the crisis we face if Trump goes in for a second term because he will be vengeful he will not be running for a third term you know might be president
01:01:27
for life for all we know at that point um his supporters are armed they are angry they are misinformed they are conspiracists and everything from
01:01:39
vaccine availability on another pandemic all the way down to to school shootings to race relations to gay rights none of this is going to matter if we walk in
01:01:53
blindly walk into another Trump term and then if you added majorities in both houses to that if it was a sweep and a supreme court position to back every single thing he does Sixers farri
01:02:07
Catholic SL Protestant cultist majority we have a prescription that means nothing else you're thinking about talking not to you now darra but everybody nothing you think matters
01:02:20
matters if we lose this one so basically I'm the oncologist saying you know you came in for a checkup on a sore throat and you don't have a dentist right now and you've got us you need knee surgery
01:02:33
and all this other yes these are all real problems but guess what you have throat cancer and if we don't start chemo today and radiation therapy and through everything we've got at it none of your
01:02:45
other ailments matter because you're going to be dead in a month and that's the situation we're in so my to my friends on the left I am begging I am
01:02:57
pleading fight this fight and when it's done we can all get back to everything that bothers us that we want to correct but right now this minute right now as we Face the future with Trump as
01:03:09
potentially the president again stop whining about Biden being too old you idiots he's done a good job and if he is the candidate godamn get behind him and fight tooth and nail and stop
01:03:22
worrying about whether you know he we can he can if that's what's going to happen throw your weight behind him if you take a different view than he does on his leadership with the
01:03:34
Palestinian Israeli conflict sorry folks none of that matters if Trump's president we're going to have somebody who is a you know an absolute authoritarian allagar in power forever
01:03:46
and the people who follow him and look at what's already happening with Mike Johnson Etc so if you care about that get the hell out of the street because this is a distraction if you're turning part of the left against the
01:04:00
Democrats based on this and you'd rather have Trump you're an idiot because you think you have problems now uh you know netanyahu's best friend was Donald
01:04:11
Trump Open Season told them we're going to move the embassy and then after that take the whole West Bank screw the Palestinians nothing you care about is going to get better or matters if Biden
01:04:25
loses the next election and and and I don't know how many say ways but sideways to say this but if I you know when I look at the
01:04:36
situation if we don't fight for this we will lose everything and so I would just say hey that's the theme till 2024 shut up about everything else and fight the big fight
01:04:50
because in context nothing else will matter we don't have time for anything else right now where this is an emergency well I guess that that says it Frank that that could not be any more Frank and I think a lot of people agree
01:05:08
with you at this this time and place it's it's just interesting that we seem to find ourselves in this place of Nothing Else Matters more and more often that everything is at stake that this is the most important election of our
01:05:20
lifetime and it starts to sound like hyperbole after point but uh I I don't think you're wrong and so as many of us can be sounding the the Clarion call as possible I think um the more folks I
01:05:33
think will will really understand what is at stake when it comes down to it um thank you Frank for for your um thoughtful discussion and like I said I there are just so many connection points
01:05:46
at which I I can connect with what you're doing and uh identify with your story and your journey your your progression out of that world that you you have come from so um I just
01:05:59
appreciate the work you do and I am really honored to have had this conversation with you I I really am Dara thank you you you it's been lovely talking with you next time I'll
01:06:12
get to ask the [Music] questions thanks so much for watching we're only a few subscribers short of 2 million Subs Please Subscribe right now to the midest touch YouTube channel for
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End of transcript