An evangelical minister-turned-academic who has written a new book warning about the dangers of white Christian nationalism is the guest on the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s Sunday TV show.
Bradley Onishi, an expert on philosophy, theology and American religion with a degree from Oxford University, did his undergrad from Azuza-Pacific University (a Christian school) and is a former minister. He is co-host with Daniel Miller, another former minister, of a podcast called Straight White American Jesus. Onishi’s new book is called Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism — And What Comes Next.
White Christian nationalists “don’t care if you share their morals or their identity. What they want is that you will grant them power and access, and if you do so, you will be their man as long as you are viable,” Onishi explains to “Freethought Matters” co-hosts Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Someone like Trump went beyond Reagan, went beyond anyone else by not only promising absolutely open access to things like Supreme Court choices, but he promised — and this is a really key point — to brutalize their enemies. He promised to punish the people in the United States who the white Christian nationalists think are out of line and need to be put back in line.”
If you don’t live in the quarter-plus viewership of the nation where the show broadcasts on Sunday, you can already catch the interview on FFRF’s YouTube channel. New shows go up every Thursday.
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Upcoming guests include reproductive rights researcher Professor Tiffany Green and Michelle Dowd, author of a new book about growing up in a cult. You can catch interviews from past seasons here, including the fall 2022 season with author John Irving, actor John “Q” de Lancie and Washington Post columnist Kate Cohen. Previous interviews include performer Julia Sweeney and Reps. Jared Huffman, Jamie Raskin, Hank Johnson and Eleanor Holmes Norton, among many other notable authors, activists and freethinkers.
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