Bad Faith: Christian Nationalism’s Unholy War on Democracy

Bad Faith – Christian Nationalism ’s Unholy War on Democracy w Stephen Ujlaki

Episode 205 Refuse Fascism

Sun, Jun 09, 2024 3:42PM • 59:16

Stephen Ujlaki 00:00

When Trump got elected in 2016, I was shocked, I did not think it was a possibility, none of my friends did. That’s when I realized I lived in a bubble, and I started doing research on evangelicals, because they were obviously the key players in all this. In terms of the future of the Republican Party or even the future of our republic, there is going to be a confrontation, because if he loses, he’ll say he won, and there will be violence, and if, god forbid that he should win, our democracy’s over. I do believe if enough of us stand up and are active, we will be able to defeat it. But that’s what it’s going to take. It’s not spectator sport anymore.

Sam Goldman 00:58

Welcome to episode 205 of the Refuse Fascism podcast, a podcast brought to you by volunteers with Refuse Fascism. I’m Sam Goldman, one of those volunteers and host of the show. Refuse Fascism exposes, analyzes and stands against the very real danger and threat of fascism coming to power in the United States. Today, we’re sharing an interview with filmmaker Stephen Ujlaki. Steve and I discuss his film, Bad Faith, a documentary on Christian nationalism’s unholy war on democracy, that he produced, wrote and directed. Bad Faith is available for streaming now on Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Google Play and YouTube.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who rates and reviews the show. Help us reach more listeners at a time, I know you will agree, refusing fascism is needed more than ever. After you listen to today’s episode, be sure to share it with others — click the Share button in your app to send this episode to a friend or ten, or let the world know why you listen by rating — drop us five stars — and reviewing on Apple podcast or your listening platform of choice. Thanks as well to the patrons who help make this show possible. Join the community over at Patreon.com/RefuseFascism.

Before we chat about Bad Faith, there are some developments from this past week that relate to the fascist movement that I want to touch on briefly. Today’s interview focuses on Christian nationalism, and we can’t talk about the movement’s significance without talking about the assault on abortion rights, birth control and the rights of women to exist as full, independent beings. This month will mark two years since the illegitimate Supreme Court stole the lives, futures and dreams, hijacked the bodies of women with the Dobbs decision.

While later this month, we’ll dedicate a full episode to this topic, there are a few things I want to highlight, as the lives of women and others with the capacity for pregnancy are once again in the hands of the same SCOTUS who overturned Roe, who will decide likely this month, two cases which could have huge ramifications for abortion access across the country. One involves whether federal law requiring hospitals to provide more emergency abortions in cases when a woman’s health is threatened — save women’s lives — supersede state abortion bans — kill women. The other involves whether the FDA acted properly in its decision to ease regulations making it easier for people to access abortion pills without in person visits. Within the past ten days, the Texas Supreme Court ruled against 20 women whose health and lives were endangered by the state of Texas’s abortion ban.

Republicans made clear now again, they are not stopping at banning abortion. They are going for it all, including birth control, and they’re starting with emergency contraception when they blocked federal legislation to protect access to contraception, and a new report from the National Domestic Violence Hotline demonstrates how the end of Roe and the rise of abortion bans across the country have empowered domestic abusers now able to wield the power of the state to force their victims into pregnancies they can’t escape. For a helpful breakdown on this, I recommend reading Post Dobbs, abortion bans have given abusers a new power, by Kylie Chung, writing for Jezebel.

I’ve said before, but it needs repeating that we are no longer shocked — that we rightly assume these outcomes does not and should not subdue our horror, our disgust, our outrage; it doesn’t soften the blow of the daily indignities we suffer, made all the worse by those who say: Oh, it could be worse — or that it’s relieving how much harm has been mitigated, or by those who say our rage only matters should it translate to votes — as if this is not an emergency, as if we’re not already dying, as if the Christian fascists will accept anything short of our subservience or elimination.

I thought Jessica Valenti captured it well in her Substack post titled Implausible deniability: “The nightmare that’s unfolded since Roe was overturned has been swift, far reaching and defined by women suffering: Cancer patients denied abortions, children forced to leave their home states for care, women who describe feeling like “walking coffins” after being made to carry non viable pregnancies to term. That’s to say nothing of those simply denied the ability to decide their own lives and futures, their autonomy stolen overnight.

These stories alone are horror, but what makes them an insult is Republicans continued insistence that everything is just fine. It’s a coincidence that OBGYNs are fleeing anti choice states. Women going septic? Not their fault, ever expanding travel bans that’s for our protection.” Again, we’ll have more on this soon, but in the meantime, I think it’s worth going back and listening to my interview with Merle Hoffman discussing her book ‘Choices, a Post Roe Abortion Rights Manifesto,’ it’s episode 197 and it aired April 14, and my interview with Jenny Cohn on Christian nationalist project 2025, episode 193 which aired on March 10.

The Christian fascist movement has reached a new milestone in their evolution from fringe to heart of the modern GOP, not only having reached into the highest echelons of political power, capturing much of Congress and much of the GOP state legislature — just to look at how they are literally running out of states to institute bans on trans healthcare wherever they hold power. They have taken over the intellectual and policy hubs of the so called conservative movement.

For evidence, see project 2025. I highly recommend reading Chris Lehmann, writing for The Nation, he’s got a piece titled The Theocratic Blueprint for Trump’s Next Term, and it details how Russell Voigt, president of the Center for renewing America, which is a vanguard in the Christian nationalist movement… how Voight is a leader of the project 2025 initiative, contributing author to this blueprint, and is working along with other Christian nationalist leaders to plot unprecedented consolidation of power across all branches of government for the sole purpose of installing Christian nationalist rule.

Now let’s take a mental trip to the border and talk about some people, wink wink, who are trying to fight fascism by implementing fascist policies. I want to be 100% clear here, fascism isn’t just one or two, or even the sum of many horrendous, deadly policies, it is a qualitative change in the form of governance, and this whole show aims to draw that out. Trump is promoting real plans to build brutal concentration camps to hold millions, literally millions, of people. He has said that immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country. He has threatened to shut down the border. Trump and his followers, like Texas Governor Greg Abbott, have been actively and callously using events and creating conflicts on the border to undermine the legitimacy of the Democratic Party.

For more on what a second term would mean for migrants, listen to my interview last week with Francisco Goldman. But this week, we are seeing in living color the leadership of the Democratic Party, the standard bearers and bulwark of American democracy, shut down the southern border, actively and forcefully endangering thousands of lives, on top of the everyday nightmare of migration and seeking refuge in the U.S. Why? Last week, Joe Biden said this:

Joe Biden 08:45

I believe that immigration has always been a lifeblood of America. We’re constantly renewed by an infusion of people and new talent. The Statue of Liberty is not some relic of American history. It stands for who we are as United States. So I will never demonize immigrants. I’ll never refer to immigrants as poisoning the blood of a country, and further, I’ll never separate children from their families at the border. I will not ban people from this country because of their religious beliefs. I will not use the US military to go into neighborhoods all across the country, pull millions of people out of their homes and away from their families, to put [them in] detention camps while we’re waiting deportation. As my predecessor says he will do if he occupies his office again.

Sam Goldman 09:25

He said this in his remarks announcing a policy effective immediately, to bar people who cross the border unlawfully from even applying for asylum status. The ban takes effect whenever migrant arrests are past 2,500 per day for a week. The shutdown is the headline, but he also explained new adjacent policies to cap the asylum process at the ever insufficient official ports of entry, to expedite deportations and to more aggressively pursue undocumented people who get caught up in the criminal justice system. He laid out a wish list of further militarization and surveillance on the border.

This from a president who has deported more people than any other, including Trump. If you want to encapsulate the difference between Democratic imperialism and fascist imperialism, think of the beginning of that quote. He said, “I will never refer to immigrants as poisoning the blood of our nation.” And he said it to sell policies that will endanger, destroy and end, yes, end the lives of immigrants. I won’t call you names as I send you to your death. To brutalize people fleeing war, violence, climate instability, mortal danger, which this country is largely responsible for creating and sustaining. This border shutdown is not simply a campaign tactic.

From the perspective of the ruling class as a whole, there is a real crisis at the border. In the most simple terms, borders are profitable when they are open to commerce and closed to people. But Biden and his representatives have made clear that this is also a campaign move to, in some ways, outdo the Republicans to on the basis of the shared premise that there is something detrimental about immigrants, forcefully stem the “crisis on the border.” The Democrats want people to see the fascists as the cruel, wild and incompetent anti-immigrant party, and view the Democrats as the effective anti-immigrant party. And they want this, in particular, to help them beat the fascists at the polls in November, to fortify American democracy.

Mehdi Hasan put this well when he tweeted “Lots of Dems today will celebrate this as Biden playing 3-D chess on the border and outflanking the GOP. He’s not. He’s just screwing over actual asylum seekers who he promised to support, and giving Trump the power/precedent to do even worse via executive order next year.” In addition to recognizing the fact that this is not the political home run that they are selling it as, the question begs to be asked, in the fight to defeat fascism, is this what we’re fighting for?

None of this justifies anything that Trump is saying and doing, and it doesn’t diminish even one ounce the need to stop MAGA before it’s too late, but it also does put the onus on us to separate this fight from total submission to the Democratic Party, to envision, work for and make real as urgently as possible, a future worth fighting for. I urge you to ask yourself, is closing the border part of the solution to fascism, or does it grease the wheels for it? Are we going to spread an ethos of fighting for all of humanity or ignore, normalize, and be passive in the face of the dehumanization of asylum seekers? Now truly is the time to stand up, to defend asylum seekers and immigrant rights.

In not unrelated news this week, U.S. troops reportedly took part alongside the Israeli army in a perfidious assault on a Palestinian refugee camp, killing over 200 Palestinians. You may have seen this word, ‘perfidy’, for the first time this week — it may sound innocent, but it is, in fact, the legal definition of a heinous war crime, outlawed, not only by the Geneva Conventions, but by all kinds of laws of war going back thousands of years. In this case, the war criminals used a port built by the U.S. for the sole stated purpose of delivering aid, a port used to help justify the blockage of aid from land borders in Israel and Egypt, to stage an attack where American and American backed militants posed as aid workers, driving aid vehicles en route to deliver much needed food, water and supplies.

They murdered over 200 Palestinians in this one war crime alone. Four hostages held by Hamas were retrieved through this assault. Everyone with a conscience should be asking: What will it take to actually stop this horror? And everyone should be taking action. It brings to mind a legitimate question: what would in fact, be different on the ground in Gaza If Trump were President? Or is it simply that such tactics would be used on the home front as well? With that, here is my conversation with Steve.

‘Bad Faith’ reveals how Christian nationalist leaders have spread fear and anger for decades, distorting political issues into biblical battles between good and evil. Financed through a secretive network, the Council for National Policy Christian nationalists have succeeded in taking over the entire Republican Party, turning it into a powerful weapon to truly be a wrecking ball to democracy from within. The documentary gets into the origins of this organized power grab and the grassroots coalition that included secular and interfaith leaders that are bravely confronting these unholy forces. It features two previous guests of the show, Anne Nelson, author of ‘The Shadow Network,’ and Samuel Perry, sociologist and co author of ‘Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States,’ and Perry also co-wrote with Gorsky, who was another guest on the show, ‘The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy.’

To discuss this documentary, I am so pleased to be speaking with its filmmaker, Stephen Ujlaki. Welcome Steve. Thanks for joining us.

Stephen Ujlaki 15:14

I’m glad to be here.

Sam Goldman 15:15

I feel like we can’t start this conversation about the film itself without talking about: How did you decide to make this film? What motivated you to go there?

Stephen Ujlaki 15:26

When Trump got elected in 2016 I was shocked. I did not think it was a possibility. None of my friends did. Nothing that I read suggested any such outcome. That’s when I realized I lived in a bubble, that everybody thought the way I did, and I read everything — it was a very happy group of people who were like feeding off of each other and didn’t really have a clue about what was happening in the rest of the country. I started doing research on evangelicals, because they were obviously the key players in all this. That took me to a long amount of research going back many years, but the story that I uncovered was pretty shocking, and did explain why we are where we are today. But that’s how it started. It was realizing I had to get that outside of my bubble.

Sam Goldman 16:14

It’s a really — unfortunately continues to be a relevant phenomena, where you can be totally unaware, because of our mediascape, what really is going on in this world, including and particularly in this country, and you’re surrounded by people who think like you in the the news that you’re getting, it’s not just spontaneous that you’re seeing what you’re seeing — you’re being targeted in the same way that folks on the far right are being targeted. So I think that that’s important, and many, many people were caught off guard, is an understatement, by Trump’s rise to power, and then the role that white evangelicals played in not only ascendance, but the consolidation of power, including to remain a stronghold within this movement, propelling January 6th forward, and after the coup attempt.

It seems like nothing will stop their support; there will not be a scandal that will stop their support, there will not be a trial that will stop their support, or a conviction that will stop their support. It continues to be a really essential group to look at, so I’m glad that we’re talking about it. One thing that I really appreciated about the documentary was that you went beyond the motivations of Christian nationalism, and dissect and overview the organization funding and technology that have been built up to make this the force that it is in society. I was hoping you could talk a little bit about that overall and maybe any particular elements of this network, organization, funding apparatus that stood out to you as you made the film and unearthed the story.

Stephen Ujlaki 18:11

First of all, our media did not help us in any way understand the gravity of the Trump threat — what I call the mainstream media, not through specialized media, that was a different thing, although Fox really did play a role, as we know. The problem is, when you have media industries who basically have to do with entertaining people and making money, and you find in Trump: Hey, great, this is fantastic, this is sort of like finding, like some pink elephant in the woods, and, okay, wait, let’s trot it out… Every time we do, we get huge numbers. So he was like this anomaly as far as they were concerned, and I think people watching, therefore, treated him like somebody who did not represent powerful forces behind him.

Nobody got behind that. Nobody got into what was going on there. So I fought the media, and frankly, I fought them today, because the same thing is happening, repeating the same errors. Some people are talking about, the fact that these people are treasonous, seditious, and they are attempting to bring down our country, but because of liberalism’s, how shall I say, weakness, in a way, the notion that they should give both sides equal weight, because we’re very attached to free speech, and therefore Biden is asking us to do this, he’s creating infrastructure, jobs so forth, this guy is suggesting that we overturn the whole government.

They’re treated almost as though that they are equals in some way, and this is an incredible disservice to a public that, frankly, is so undereducated and uninformed about the political ramifications of what is going on, because they’ve been isolated — this whole America exceptionalism thing. We don’t think it can happen here, what’s happened in other countries, but that’s exactly what’s happening now. You interviewed Anne, so you know all about — and she was key to the film, because, again, as you said, we went beyond the phenomenon of Christian nationalism and the rise of the extreme right to point out that they were incredibly well funded for many years by people who didn’t necessarily have a religious interest, but economically their policies, and the policies they wanted, were not popular, nobody was going to ever vote for them.

Koch ran for president on the Libertarian ticket, he got 80,000 votes. Okay, Plan B: Let’s put a lot of money into organizations that have a cover. What could be a better cover than a Christian organization? What could be a better cover than people who actually have Jesus, God, the whole apparatus going and we can say that’s what we’re about? Which, of course, is the same thing that happened when the Moral Majority came about and they decided they had to come up with a better slogan and a better rallying cry than maintaining segregation, which is exactly the reason that They got into politics, was to keep their segregated Christian academies, and they came up with this invented term, the rights of the unborn, that you would think was a joke, and was perhaps treated as a joke for many years by many people.

Guess what? It took root and now it’s treated as gospel. The money behind it is critical, and in American political reporting, not enough attention is paid to that. There’s too much feelings of we’re not gonna tread there. Same thing about religion. People ask: What about January 6th? Why wasn’t it noted? People are saying to me: Wait a minute, how come the national media made no mention of all the crosses and the Christian symbols in January 6th? Well, the answer is very simple: They didn’t want to antagonize people. They didn’t want to be perceived as anti Christian or anti religion.

So this bullshit fear of offending people stops them from reporting — that and wanting to make money and not wanting to antagonize potential viewers. It’s a perfect storm of actually magnifying the weaknesses of our system that has allowed this to happen. When you look at it, it’s criminal. These conspiracies have been going on in plain daylight for 40 years, but you needed to actually decode what was being said. I’ve done a lot of research on this, and it took me a long time to get my head around this. I thought: No, this is not possible, they can’t believe this stuff. When the pastors said: We want to recreate the kingdom of God on Earth — you might have thought listening to this, oh, yeah, this is a spiritual thing. No, they were talking about replacing democracy with theocracy.

But you wouldn’t know that because they were incredibly smart about the code that they use that they all understood. It’s like the speaker now with his code — it’s getting a little bit frazzled, because people are beginning to see what he’s actually saying and what the implications are for Dominionism and all this other stuff. But they were pussyfooting around all this stuff, and people would think: Hey, they’re harmless. And there was a certain amount of elitism at play. These people are not the smartest people in the world. They’re not going to be anybody we have to really worry about. They can have these beliefs. Fine and good, it’s not doing any harm to anybody. Boy, they got that wrong.

Sam Goldman 23:12

They got that wrong big time [SU: Big time!], and a way that lives actually are jeopardized because of it. This is not an abstract battle of theological concepts or just an ideological discussion, these are ideologies, theologies, that are being put into power and then have ramifications over people’s lives. Just as one example, the one in three women who do not have abortion access in their state of residence, because this movement was in many cases, by those who see themselves as liberals, they were locked off, they were seen as not a threat, not real, were easily dismissed, were not taken seriously. I think that your point about the media, the fear of offending people when it comes to religion in this country, that Christian supremacy is a real thing, there are things we do not push about when it comes to those Christian beliefs, even if those beliefs are being weaponized against people.

Stephen Ujlaki 24:16

One of the fundamental problems with these two split worlds is that what we in the secular world say about what they’re doing means nothing to them because of the fact that they exist in a world, a closed system, which makes perfect sense in every way, they are doing God’s will, it’s in the Bible, their leaders have told them that, they believe their leaders 100%, they’re completely obedient, that’s all part of it. I realized that you almost need to use some biblical terms in order to get to them.

One term that I don’t hear much about, but a lot of it is in the scriptures, and that is about the danger of worshiping false gods, which is exactly what. doing. It occurred to me that if we started using some of that language, that we could actually get through to some people, because it’s in the scripture in many places, because that, for thousands of years, has been a problem. This is not the first time people are saying: Hey, we speak for God, and we have a special relationship with God, and we’re doing what he wants. This is far from the first time, and it’s all in the Bible: Watch out for these people.

That’s what we try to [do] in the film with Reverend Barber and others, say: Hey, wait a minute, there is actually a true Christianity, this has nothing to do with that. But, I think the answer again, is to say that they are worshiping false gods. How else can you explain what is going on with Trump? They tried to get around it with this crazy King Cyrus thing. That’s how they get around this. How can this morally corrupt person be sent by god? Easy, it’s in the Bible. God used King Cyrus, who was a detestable tyrant but was good to the Jews. Hey, that’s Donald Trump. God is using him.

It’s so ridiculous, but at the same time, anything they want to find, they can find that becomes biblical before it was not biblical. Like, integration was not biblical, segregation was biblical. Women’s place, it was biblical that men were in charge, it’s not biblical that women should have equal rights. All this stuff. And the other thing about it is they’re trying to push back on three or four hundred years of progress, pushing back on the Enlightenment in the 18th century, pushing back on reason and science. This is a group that was so humiliated during the Scopes Trial In the late twenties that they laid low for like 20-30, years, refusing to say anything or do anything or get involved in the public square, which they called the devil’s playground, because they were so ridiculed for believing in creationism and for believing in these things that they still believe in.

They are a very aggrieved group in that sense, that they now have an opportunity to completely reverse what happened: No, we weren’t founded as a secular nation, we were founded as a Christian nation, and we’re deviating from the path by every secular thing we do, and every secularist, every secular humanist, is demonic. As a closed system, Sam, it all makes perfect sense, and everything we on our side do to try to say: Hey, this is wrong, this is where we should be doing — doesn’t mean anything to them. There’s no particular reason that we’re going to be able to reason with people.

I was hoping with the film that I could get people in the center, and I think some people, after seeing the film, and I’ve shown it now, a number of times, people are stunned because from all the confusion that they feel, this is a film that connects the dots for them, and it helps explain why we we have such distrust of our institutions, and why we don’t believe in the legitimacy of elections. Well, that was part of the plan, wasn’t it? Paul Weyrich’s manifesto: We’re never going to win through democracy, never. Let’s kill it. Let’s replace it with theocracy. Then we’ll be in charge. And anyway, the rule of God is much better than the rule of man. [end of Weyrich’s voice] This stuff was dealt with in the 18th century, but the Enlightenment never hit the evangelicals.

Sam Goldman 28:17

One of the things is waking people up. If you are to look at reality right now, it is scary as hell. You are dealing with people who are fact-free, for whom this is their last chance. This is their last battle in a holy war. They have nothing to lose. They feel like their very existence is threatened. And when you’re dealing with people, and not just a handful of people, you’re dealing with a truly mass movement of people — including people in some of the highest political office in this country, like the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson — who truly believe they are on a godly mission.

Where you have people like Charlie Kirk saying that God is on Trump’s side — and what that allows and unleashes, I think, cannot be underestimated. When you’re faced with people who are saying: Any election that we don’t win is illegitimate, I think that you then have to consider that this war for them is not just a rhetorical device. The language of war is real to them. What you’re trying to do with this film in sounding the alarm and snapping some people out of it — of course, it’s not going to get the most hardcore, that’s not who this is, to — I think it does matter when people who are moved by their faith to speak up for justice, it does actually delegitimize some of the weaponizing of Christianity as bludgeon.

When you do have people saying: I’m Christian and this is wrong and I’m against it, it actually does matter. It is part of the culture that we need to see, and that comes through in your film. That’s important, and also defanging a little bit that this is just some spontaneous movement — that there’s all these people just feel these things. No, this is a movement that was planned, that was strategized, that was funded, that has organization and media, and this is a long game for them, and they are now reaping the fruits, getting delivered more than they even thought they could.

Both of those pieces are helpful. You mentioned Paul Weyrich, and I thought that one frame through which you tell the story is how the Christian nationalists, starting with Paul Weyrich, going into the Tea Party, and now through MAGA, are finding success not by bolstering “their party,” the Republicans, who have supported their general vision for 50 plus years, but by destroying that Party. This wasn’t a vote red no matter who kind of movement. Can you tell us the thinking behind that and how it’s playing up through now.

Stephen Ujlaki 31:09

It’s an incredible story, because, if you think of it, Weyrich and his colleagues were so upset at the Goldwater defeat in ’64, and they imagined that the Republicans were never gonna be able to get a majority of voters on their side. So they were desperately looking around for allies, and they hit upon the evangelicals. And Weyrich, for years, was courting them, trying to get them interested in politics. He says to Randall Balmer — we asked Weyrich about this — He said: What did it take to get the Evangelicals on board? He said: Oh, my God, I spent years there, nothing worked, pornography, family, this, that, whatever.

No, it was the fact that they were gonna lose their tax exempt status for these very, very successful race academies — the academies that they put together to avoid integration — they were fully white, they were considered to have tax exempt status. After Brown versus Board of Education and subsequent rulings took place, they were going to lose their tax exempt status because they were clearly discriminating. As Randall says in the film: You could not claim to be working for the public good and deserving of a tax exempt status if you were discriminating. They were furious at this, and so they got behind the thing with with Weyrich.

From Weyrich’s point of view, this group of very malleable leaders who were very interested in it for the money and the fame that they were going to get from it was perfect, and it provided what was needed for Reagan to win. One of the things I love best in the film is the fact that they took these people, and the Republican Party for years, made promises that they were going to do things for their support, and very rarely came through. They knew that the things that these evangelical leaders wanted, the majority of Americans did not want, nor the majority of Republicans. They kind of played them for many years.

Weirich was so incensed that they were doing this, which is why he ended up creating the Council for National Policy, and said: We have to have a parallel structure, we have to figure out how to counterbalance, the Republican Party is not interested in revolution, they’re too moderate, we have to do something about it. So, the interesting story to me is that eventually, what happened is that because of Christian nationalism, because of the rise of the Tea Party, because of the reaction to the Obama presidency, which really freaked out all the white supremacists in the country — Republican or Democrat, let’s admit it, a lot of people were not ready for that. That fueled this wave of Christian nationalism, and the Council for National Policy took advantage of this to push their people and spend a lot of money on putting an extremists like them in power.

So, the Tea Party was the instigator, Trump on the sidelines, auditioning for the part with his birtherism, stuff like that, and then ultimately, in 2015, they were strong enough to basically boot out… Boehner left because he was all over, he realized he no longer had a governing majority. So, they took over the Republican Party, and they have now completely destroyed the Republican Party, and made it basically a cult for Trump. These people who were sort of like: Just feed him a few things and they’ll go along, they took over completely. Their belief system, this whole Manichaeism about the good and the bad and the evil and god of the devil, which they believed in theologically, and were taught that — it was the fundamentalism that was the basis of the religion.

It was a constant struggle between the forces of good and evil in the world; every day was a struggle. That got transposed to the political structure. How? Well, because when Weyrich told them how they should convince their followers to vote Republican, he said: Simple, call it the Party of god. And the Democrats, of course — Jimmy Carter, President, who was born again himself, never mind — Democrats, party of the devil. That was a way to get them to vote Republican, and it worked; it got Reagan elected. But that same mentality and that same demonization that was used to get them to vote has now become one of the most dominant characteristics of the country today.

So all these things that are happening, Sam, were the result of business deals that were made. None of this was natural. None of this was. The Southern Baptist Convention thought the Roe versus Wade was great; more abortions meant there would be fewer blacks. They were thinking: Okay, this is gonna keep the black population down. It was only when Weyrich said to them: Look, we have to be against something if the Moral Majority is gonna have any meaning. And he convinced them that, knowing that you can’t run on a banner of keeping segregation, let’s do something else. Hey, the rights of the unborn, what a great idea!

This is marketing — marketing that was so successful before a group that was, frankly gullible, and part of their culture was to be totally accepting of what their leaders said. There’s one point of the film that there’s an NBC reporter who asked Falwell… Falwell says: You know, they pretty much, my evangelic congregations do what the pastor says. The guy said: That’s a tremendous amount of power. Falwell says: Yeah, it is. They exercised it, and they moved tens of millions of people over the years to become the Christian nationalists that they are today. It’s an incredible story. It’s something that I hope in the film by showing people where this all came from — it’s a very straightforward account of events that led us to this point — hopefully, it de-sanctifies some of this for people who are interested.

Hopefully, it reduces it to the level of: Hey, this is politics, these were political deals that these guys made. Falwell and Robertson became fabulously wealthy. The whole prosperity preachers, the whole evangelical fundamentalist religion is based on entrepreneurs who make a lot of money off their followers, and who do exactly what they tell them to do. You have the perfect storm. This is fascism — a cross and a flag — and this is what American fascism looks like today. That’s exactly what we’re dealing with.

But the American public does not want to know about it, or think about it, or imagine that this country could actually undergo what many other countries have gone through because of this other ridiculous myth of American exceptionalism. There’s all these things that have built up over the years that now, when American democracy needs all the alert, educated citizens that are out there, they don’t have a lot. We have, like, five months to do some educating, because people are not ready to be able to take on the kind of onslaught that you were describing earlier.

Sam Goldman 37:48

Based on what you were laying out in terms of the Christian fascist takeover, really, of the modern GOP, what do you think this all tells us about the current state of the Republican Party, and what you see in store for us in the coming months or years? Whichever angle you want to take on that — I know that the film ends with Project 2025, for instance.

Stephen Ujlaki 38:14

What is the truth today, as it was several years ago with Trump, it’s the base that is radical. The leaders, not so much. The leaders hadn’t bought into this thing. First of all, you had the pastors realizing that if they didn’t say certain very violent things and were not fiercely protective of certain things or people, they would lose parts of their congregation. So you have an incredibly fervid base of people who have completely bought into this thing and do not want to hear about anything else. They bought into it, hook, line and sinker.

So what really has happened over the last couple of years is that the base has been in the forefront. It wasn’t the leaders who were leading them down this path, the leaders were reluctantly following if they wanted to keep their jobs. Then, the base found Trump. Now, a lot of the leaders, whether they’d be pastors or other Republicans, as we know, abhorred Trump. But how was it that he then nevertheless got where he is today? Russell Moore says in the film, many evangelical pastors and leaders agreed with him about Trump. He said: That is until the primaries.

The primaries showed the strength that Trump has, and that’s when they folded. That’s when they said: Okay, wait a minute. We better get behind this guy, because so many people are behind him. It’s a serious problem when you have the base which is that radical, and they’re only listening at this point now to one guy, to Trump. Because Trump is the one who’s willing to say out loud what nobody said before, which is why they love him, because they feel he’s telling the truth, as it is. In terms of the future of the Republican Party, or even the future of our Republic, there is going to be a confrontation, because if he loses, he’ll say he won, and there will be violence, and if, god forbid, that he should win, our democracy’s over, because he’s made his intentions very, very clear, and can claim to say: I’ve said this all along, there’s no news here, this is what I’m going to do, we’re gonna have a strong man, that’s what we need to do to save America from the communists and the Marxists and all these fake enemies that they put together.

People have to realize that it’s gonna get very confrontational, Sam. There’s no way you can just sit on the sidelines or bury your head in the sand, because these people are ferociously dedicated to making this thing happen, and any deviation from what they think they deserve and what god wants is going to be treated really, really badly by the demonic forces that oppose them. It’s going to get worse before hopefully it gets better. There’s no question in my mind. And the American public, if I were to say anything, just stick with it and realize: As long as you can vote, vote. Hopefully the film, as it reaches certain people — it’s not going to reach the people who are totally in the cult — but people who are in the center and who are somehow feeling seduced by the power of what’s going on, hopefully to bring them back to a realization of what’s at stake.

Sam Goldman 41:08

Or to get people to join in sounding the alarm — even it being a tool in that way.

Stephen Ujlaki 41:16

Absolutely. We’ve got people who are hosting screenings, we have speakers program. We’re having screenings all over the country, and we’re going to focus on swing states in particular, and have speakers come and talk, and the Q and A afterward. People after screenings are in shell shock. They see this stuff and they freak out. The point being: Wait a minute, now you know the reality, don’t bury your hair in the sand, fight it. You can still fight it, you’re the majority, and this is a democracy — fight it.

Everybody should fight it. This is not just some blithe hyperbole that the media coming up with, that democracy’s at stake. Democracy is absolutely at stake, just listen to what Trump is saying, or his people: Stephen Miller, proto fascist, complete fascist. They’re out of the closet completely now. They’re so confident they’re gonna win, but they know they don’t have to win. They’re gonna claim that they won, and they’re gonna cause a lot of violence. They’re telling us that.

Sam Goldman 42:09

One thing that has been recently highlighted, and is in your film that I wanted to get some of your thoughts on, is that in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Year of Hate and Extremism report that I always find very helpful, they describe the New Apostolic Reformation as, “The greatest threat to U.S. democracy that you’ve never heard of. It is already a powerful, wealthy and influential movement and composes a highly influential bloc of one of the two main political parties in the country.

So few people have heard of NAR that it is possible that without resistance in our local communities, Dominionism might win without ever having been truly opposed.” In your film, Steve, you lift up Dominionism, you talk about the Watchman Decree and key players in that movement. I just wanted to give you an opportunity, if there’s anything that you want to share here in terms of, what is this movement, and why is it so pernicious? and perhaps maybe, why don’t more people know about it?

Stephen Ujlaki 43:15

Michelle Paul Wolnau, who’s an apostle and one of the main NAR people — this is something that is the perfect mix, again, of this religious, political bullshit with this pure Weyrich ruthless rush? duty, Dominionism from 40-50, years ago as part of the new gospel, as part of the thing that they follow. The New Apostolic Reformation — somebody should look up this guy, Wagner — they are insane. Terry Gross did an interview with him 10-15, years ago. They believe in demons, they’ve been sent everywhere.

They are so far out there that somebody needs to spend more time focusing on on what they believe in, because they are insane. They put the Evangelicals to shame. This is taking it even further. This is way out there, and it’s, again, the whole notion that god has told them to take territory and to take control of the world — taking it all very, very literally and very politically, which is what Weyrich — he says in the beginning of the film to Christianize the country and to take the Gospels in a very literal sense, politically. That’s what NAR is doing. It’s the continuation.

To put it in context, it shows to what extent the movement has grown and had a permutation into this area, which has been incredibly successful, because it’s not pure church and it’s not pure politics (political), it’s this mix with a lot of demonic talk in it, as well as some very, very out there political statements. But it just shows the extent to which Christian nationalism has grown over the last several years. When I started the film, I didn’t know that much about it. I was focused on the evangelicals, but in the last five or six years, it’s grown exponentially, and the NAR is the latest manifestation of the mass movement aspect of it. With these apostles and these chiefs, it’s this pseudo religious organization filled with a lot of mumbo jumbo, but also, obviously, having great appeal to people who buy into the message.

Then you find out that Mike Johnson starts talking about NAR like it was the Red Cross or something, or some legitimate organization. It’s not a legitimate organization. It’s also preaching theocracy. It’s also anti democratic, and it’s doing everything it can to prevent this country from continuing as a democracy. So it’s incredibly threatening. A lot of attention should be paid to it, because I don’t think they’re getting enough attention. People don’t understand. You should look up one of the founders, this guy, Wagner, you won’t believe it, how crazy they are. It’s not just me saying they’re crazy.

You should listen to Terry Gross interviewing this guy, talking, he and his wife. She was a professional exorcist. She went around exorcizing demons from people. That’s what she did. Her husband’s very proud of her, and he said he’s doing that, and I’m doing this other thing, together, we’re like, god’s main army. He’s the founder of the NAR, so it’s actually an army. It’s onward, Christian soldiers, literally, and it’s just very scary because it’s going on, and, as you said, not enough attention is paid to it. I do think it helps when you turn the spotlight on these people. It does help, it makes people think twice about getting involved in something.

Sam Goldman 46:46

There’s an audio documentary series that talks a lot about the New Apostolic Reformation. It’s called ‘Charismatic Revival Fury.’ It’s a series done with scholar Matthew D. Taylor. It’s part of the Straight White American Jesus podcast, that is a project of Bradley Onishi, and it talks you through some of the key figures like see C. Peter Wagner, people like Dutch sheets and how people like General Michael Flynn or Doug Mastriano and others fit into this matrix. It’s written by Matthew D. Taylor, who was a previous guest on the show, produced by Bradley Onishi, who also has been on the show. We’ll link it in the show notes, and I’ll definitely share it with you, Steve, because it is fascinating and a very troubling sense of the word, but it’s something that I think we have to continue to be aware of, because they are really setting the pace and the scope of policy. Their Seven Mountain Mandate isn’t just talk, they’re moving forward with this theocratic blueprint.

Stephen Ujlaki 47:53

And, Sam, the Charismatics were the bottom of the rung of the whole kind of Baptist, fundamentalist Evangelical, they were the ones who were like: If you had relatives who were charismatics, you didn’t necessarily invite them to dinner. Paula White was a charismatic, she’s the one who befriended Trump realized they recognized each other as fellow hustlers. She’s the one who introduced him through the Charismatics. The Charismatics were the ones he hung out [with] — there’s a shot of him with some people, and they’re laying their hands on his head, and he’s trying to look… those are the Charismatics that met in 2015. Now, the NAR, the Charismatics and people like Paul Wallnau, the speaking in tongues and all that stuff, now they’re dominant, and the NAR is a perfect example of how far it’s gotten.

Sam Goldman 48:37

One thing that I feel like I couldn’t have an honest conversation without bringing up, is that there was so much in the film that I thought was so powerful and important, including all the voice that the film gives to Christians against Christian nationalism, the sharing of the petition, and all of that I think, is really important. Not all Christians are Christian nationalists. That said, one thing that I struggle with when people have been talking about Christian nationalism is the idea that, like, it’s masquerading or pretending to be Christianity, that it’s not real Christianity, I think that it’s a real form of Christianity, even if it isn’t the dominant form of Christianity, or that all Christians don’t believe it.

By and large, this is a political movement weaponizing real religious belief. They are taking the Bible literally. That is a horror, it’s something that if you took it literally, would uphold slavery, would uphold like the smashing of babies’ heads and the taking of women as property, and a bunch of horrendous things that most Christians would not uphold. But that doesn’t make it less real in the same way that I think that there’s this idea that, like Christian nationalists claiming the mantle of the forefathers and”real America” is wrong. There’s been a conflicting record there. The Confederacy: they do have some claims to the mantle of the original idea of America, a slave society with the trappings of democracy amongst the elites pursuing a notion of freedom to dominate others. I think that there’s that tension there.

Stephen Ujlaki 50:21

I completely agree with you. I was attempting to take it out of the realm of religion and turn it into a political movement and emphasize that part in order to be able to criticize it as a political movement and not as a criticism. I thought — and this is strategic — you know, Russell Moore calls it a heresy, other people call it a heresy, Barbara calls it a heresy. It is a heretical form of Christianity. Barbara makes the point: Religion can do a lot of good and it could do a lot of evil. ]

This is an example where religion is being used to do a lot of evil. It is a form of Christianity, you can’t say that it’s not, but as I said, I am choosing to put it so far outside the mainstream of it, to try to say: Hey, listen, this is not what the majority of Christians believe, and we don’t even take it as a religion, because it’s against the teachings of Jesus. It’s against love your neighbor, it’s against do unto others as he would have them do to you, it’s against the basic precepts of the Gospels of Jesus, which, frankly, I’m trying to do because I want as much as possible for people not to accuse us of being against religion. We’re not against religion, but it is true to say: Hey, we’re against that, but we’re not against the good Christianity. But your point is well taken.

Sam Goldman 50:21

Yeah, there’s many people who, as I said, are moved by their faith, whatever it might be, including Christianity, to stand up and fight for justice and to fight for the rights of all people. Absolutely. And many of those people are against the weaponization of religion. I just think that, like in the media, there’s a lot of wanting to remove Christian nationalism, make it very in this moment, in this now, as a new phenomenon, divorced from history of the way that religion has been used in this country from the days of slavery, when the Bible was used as a justification for the owning as other people as properties.

Stephen Ujlaki 52:18

No, you’re right. It’s a huge problem, because you’ve got a country that is — what [do] they call it? civil religion? We had a thing with Billy Graham originally, because he’s the guy who opened the door. He’s the guy who said: Hey, evangelicals make the best patriots because we believe so firmly in god and we’re the best defense against godless communism — in the 50s. Eisenhower figured, hey, why not bring him on? You had Billy Graham, and Billy Graham went through his whole Nixon experience and decided: Okay, I screwed up.

His son is a complete… words did not describe the worthlessness of Franklin Graham — the complete toadiness of Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham, who apologized and said, If there were ever a wedding between the religious right and evangelicals, he was saying: Don’t do it, it’s not going to be good for our religion. It’s not. That’s the thing about it, it’s not only destroying democracy, it’s destroying evangelical faith. You’ve got millions of young people who who don’t want to be involved anymore, because it’s become this political Trump Organization. The majority of Christians and the majority of Americans, certainly, are against this. So we have to actually vote. We have to be activists. We have to stand up for our beliefs, because our rights are in serious danger. Just look at the Roe versus Wade overturn as an example — a sort of taste of things to come, a preview of coming attractions.

Sam Goldman 53:36

Steve, as we close out, I want to make sure that we talk about how people can see the film, and anything relating to screening, organizing, or anything else. I wanted to give you the opportunity to talk about that.

Stephen Ujlaki 53:49

We have a website called BadFaithDocumentary.com and you can go on it, and you can see, first of all, where there are screenings to see the film. It shows where it streams, and it’s streaming on all of the major streamers, Amazon, Google, Apple, so forth. Once you’ve seen the film, and you think: My god, my friends should see this, my community should see this, there’s a host of screening [link], and we have our sales company, a woman named Carolina Taylor, who’s fantastic. You send a note through the website to her saying: Hey, I’m interested in hosting a screening. She will tell you what to do. It’s very inexpensive, I mean, to the point of almost no expense, because we’re trying to get the word out.

So people can actually have an opportunity to do something, very specifically, to spread the film if, after seeing it, they feel other people should see this. They have the opportunity to do that. And if the screenings involve enough people in the audience, potentially we, at no cost, will bring in an Anne Nelson, bring in a Nancy McLain or Kyle Spencer or other participants from the film, like Sam Perry, Randall Balmer, Steve Schmidt, Reverend Ball, and he’s using the film all over the place to help get to the June 29 march on Washington. So people see it as a very useful tool to educate people.

Sam Goldman 55:11

That’s so great. And that website one more time?

Stephen Ujlaki 55:14

It’s BadFaithDocumentary.com

Sam Goldman 55:17

We encourage you to go and and watch the film, and after you watch it, we hope that you’ll set up a screening and let us know about it. Tag Refuse Fascism in it. We’d love to hear about it. We’d love to learn about what your community, your faith group, whoever you organize it with. We’d love to hear your experience and that discussion. Steve, I want to thank you so much for your film and for coming and talking with us about Bad Faith.

Stephen Ujlaki 55:42

Sam, it was a real pleasure, and I thank you very much for helping spread the word. I know you do a great job doing that with your interviews. There’s a lot of work to be done, so I applaud you and and I do believe if enough of us stand up and are active and respond to this, we will be able to defeat it. But that’s what it’s going to take. It’s not spectator sport anymore.

Sam Goldman 56:03

Time to get in the game for sure. Thank you, Steve.

Stephen Ujlaki 56:05

Time to get in the game, exactly.

Sam Goldman 56:08

Thanks for listening to Refuse Fascism. Did you want a Refuse Fascism t-shirt? Well, your dreams are coming true. Soon, we’ll be posting a link for how you can get a Refuse Fascism t-shirt this summer. So I’ll be updating the socials and talking about it on the pod as soon as that becomes real. But I wanted to let you know to keep your eyes peeled for that. You asked, and we are answering. Late, I know, but we’re making it happen.

Sam Goldman 56:41

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