SIO439: God and Country with Katherine Stewart

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:18 Thomas: I'm your host, Thomas Smith, and today, ooh, got an interesting one for you. We're speaking with Katherine Stewart, journalist and author, who has written some books, one of which has been made into the film "God and Country," which I know just based on my Facebook feed, many of you have watched and and enjoyed, of course, about the Christian right. It is about Christian nationalism, has done such vital investigative journalism and writing on this. We're so lucky to have her.

I'm so glad she agreed to come on the show and about how she got into her first book on the topic, "The Good News Club," and then "The Worshipers" was the book that got made into "God and Country" by Rob Reiner, among others. She'll talk about it. I'm excited to get over to that. First, a couple announcements. One, as usual, patreon.com/seriouspod is where you can support the the show and get the bonus stuff.

This month's bonus is going to be a little different, but it was a ton of fun. So Dr. Brian Gillis, astrophysicist, of course, got on to talk about another Ted Chang story called Omphalos, I forget exactly how you you pronounce it, but it's something something like that. And super interesting. It's the one about if Christian was kind of true and what the universe would look like. It is a really cool story. But also, we talked about some religious arguments, why they are not very good.

There is a lot of atheism and there is a lot of philosophy, why these arguments do not work and what science would look like if Christianity were true. It's a ton of fun. So I hope you'll jump on over to patreon.com/ ahold of that. And also you don't have to hear the ads. So all good reasons to support the show. Thank you so much to those who do. And this break for non -patrons, we'll get on over to my interview with Katherine Stewart. Katherine, thanks so much for joining us today.

0:02:05 Katherine: It's great to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

0:02:08 Thomas: Film that's just out, God and Country, I know so many of my friends have watched it. I see people sharing it. An atheism background, this show. So there's a lot of overlap of atheism and politics and basically, let it suffice to say, a lot audience are interested in this. So I'm so pleased to have you today. Where do you want to start? Oh, I mentioned that you had an interesting kind of origin story, and I love hearing those anyway. So how did you get into this whole thing?

0:02:35 Katherine: Well, my origin story starts in the beautiful state of California. In 2009, we learned that a Good News Club coming to our daughter's public elementary school in Santa Barbara. News Clubs claimed to offer Bible study from a non -denominational standpoint. You know, I was pretty naive at the the time, I thought non -denominational meant non -sectarian. Look, I'm a big free speech supporter. I don't frankly see a problem with teaching about religion in public schools as long as you're not endorsing religion or endorsing one over another. You don't just teach it as history or as literature or things like that. My views really shifted when a little girl I knew named Zoe was approached on the playground by a classmate who was attending this club. Now, we're talking six-year-olds here, right?

0:03:30 Katherine: And this girl attending the Good News Club had worked out that Zoe was a member of a religious minority group. So that girl said to Zoe, you're going to go to hell because you don't believe in Jesus. And I know it must be true because they taught it to me in school. And they don't teach things in school that aren't true. And was really striking to me because, first of all, I realized they're not teaching religion religion from a non-sectarian standpoint. They're indoctrinating kids in a very particular form of the Christian faith. But to the point, it was really clear to me that little kids were unable to distinguish between something taught to them in their school and something endorsed by this school. Like public schools have a real cloak authority in the minds of kids. They think if it's happening in schools, it must be what the school wants them to believe.

0:03:07 Thomas: Sure. Yeah, right.

0:04:19 Thomas: Six -year -olds aren't checking their planner and being like, oh, this is technically after school Okay. Take this with a grain of salt.

0:04:26 Katherine: No, exactly. So the kids were being confused into believing that the religion of these clubs was the religion of the school, the official religion. This is what their officials wanted them to believe, what their teachers wanted them TO believe. And they also seem to be encouraging this kind of faith -based bigotry. Clubs The were giving kids candy and prizes for recruiting their peers to the club. And there were, there were Tell kids that you need to tell your friends they're going at school, at school. They're going to be separated from God forever. And you need to tell your parents they need to attend the right kind of church, so all of a sudden you're having these needless wars, religious wars, break out on kindergarten playgrounds.

0:04:49 Thomas: Wow.

0:05:06 Katherine: Public

0:05:05 Thomas: And again, you said public school.

0:05:08 Katherine: Schools, and and there were thousands of these clubs operating in public, and we're talking elementary schools, like little kids who still believe in the tooth fairy and will do anything for a cupcake, cake.

0:05:08 Thomas: Wow, yeah, yeah. Would lose my shit. I wouldn't have been too pleased. Yeah.

0:05:20 Katherine: I kind of did. I kind of did, but then I also like as a journalist, I was really astonished that next to nothing had been written about these clubs. So, I wrote a piece for the Santa Barbara Independent expressing my concern about these clubs and the way that they were dividing our own public school communities in Santa Barbara and I heard from parents all over the country. Somehow that piece went viral.

0:05:46 Thomas: Huh.

0:05:46 Katherine: And I just thought, wow, kids, religion, public education, it's a perfect storm, right? Everybody gets upset. So the thing that really set me on my path was looking into the legal theory that had allowed these clubs to be placed in public schools in first place.

0:06:03 Thomas: Now, can I ask, were so already a reporter at the time, but had a different kind of, you beat? Okay, Okay, gotcha. Yeah, yeah

0:06:07 Katherine: A totally different beat. I mean, I trained as an investigative journalist with the late, great Wayne Barrett. He actually published the first investigative biography of Donald Trump back in the late 1980s or early 1990s. He was kind of one man journalism school, and he would take on young people as interns. He took on me as an intern, taught me so much of what I know. So many of the principles of journalism, follow the money, listen to what people say, go to the room, find the guy with the most light on him, and ask him the one question he doesn't want to be asked. Past.

0:06:49 Thomas: It's a shame. It feels like that kind of thing is dying out a little bit, little bit. You know, just now you just see like, well, now AI is going to just generate all the articles online, so you're like, well, that sucks. Yeah.

0:06:57 Katherine: Wayne was one of a kind, and in the run-up to the 2016 election, he was very ill at that time. But a lot of journalists would go to his house in Brooklyn. He had the most amazing archives, the material that he had about Donald Trump. He knew how corrupt he was, and a lot, lot of, you know, sort of detail about his real estate, um, history.

0:07:02 Thomas: Yeah.

0:07:25 Katherine: He was a really special guy. Yes.

0:07:25 Thomas: Well and when someone like him once you know who they are, you know, it must be hard to be like, I know who this guy is, and other, other people are not seeing it. Yeah. But wow, that's fortunate that you, that you got to have that kind of education. That's amazing. So you applied that to the problem at hand, which was this wild, you Now you said it was claiming it was kind of non -denominational, but it's just plain old, what, evangelical Christians or, hmm,

0:07:34 Katherine: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I a no, it's very, um, I would say a reactionary form, um, evangelical Christianity. You know, the interesting thing is that there's a spectrum, like you know, religion is incredibly diverse in America, and there are progressive evangelicals, un-conservative and reactionary evangelicals. I had a friend during this time of researching my first book who had contributed to a handbook of Christian denominations. And I out their statement of faith to him. I said, well, guess what kind of denomination this group is? And I read their statement of faith to him. And he said, it sounds independent, fundamentalist, Baptist. I mean, whatever it is, this highly inappropriate in a public elementary school setting. I don't care if the United Methodists or Unitarians. It's like when put a group in a public elementary school setting and you confuse little kids into thinking that the religion of the club is endorsed by the school, that's a violation of our Establishment Clause of our First Amendment. And frankly, the more I learned about these clubs, the more I realized that this, you among kids, this confusion was, it really appeared to be design by.

So I really set out to learn more. I to their national convention in Alabama. The Good News Clubs are sponsored by an organization called the Child Evangelism Fellowship. I found out that the CEF, as I'm going to call it, was having a national convention in Alabama. And I thought, okay, if they have the right to come to my school, my kids will have a right to attend their national

0:08:01 Thomas: Sure. Hmm. Yeah.

0:09:25 Katherine: Convention.

0:09:26 Thomas: No kidding.

0:09:27 Katherine: So I, you know, I attended good news clubs around the country. I went through one of their training programs and I started to attend the gatherings of the groups that were supporting these clubs. And the more I learned about them and the groups pushing them, the more concerned I became. I was frankly stunned. Now, Now, remember, this is 2009, 2010. You know, I could see that this movement was so strategic, so sophisticated in a legal sense, and so focused on strategy. But, you know, a lot of folks said to me, are you kidding? There's the rise of the nuns. The religious right is on the decline. And today, exactly.

0:10:03 Thomas: Yeah. Obama's president, you know, and he's a Muslim, so we're fine. No, I'm just kidding. But no, there was a, behind the joke though, the truth is like, I do feel like a lot of the left got really complacent under Obama. And I'm not, I don't, I would include myself in that as well. Well. Like it, it really is hard. It felt like, oh, how could this really be that big of a threat? You know, I

0:10:22 Katherine: Know, it's really amazing. Here's another amazing fact for me. The religious right had long stood, no, it's a little bit naive about the religious right at first, and I think that actually helped me in a way, um.

0:10:33 Thomas: Was too, for sure. Yeah. Even though I was part of it, I wasn't, apologies. Yeah, I was like part of the religious right and came out of it turned to being more left, but still completely underestimated the religious, right. Because I wasn'T a part of like the really religious, you know?

0:10:49 Katherine: Well, the thing that was astonishing to me is I'd already taken sort of at face value the statement that we stand for family values, um, know, and this is sort of how the religious rite, you know, marketed itself for a long time. But I saw through these clubs and through these other initiatives that they were, were doing, targeting children, calling other people's children the harvest, and public schools mission fields, they were treating families that didn't look like theirs with contempt, you know? And, Know, the religious right claims to stand for the American family, but they're driving support for politicians whose policies are making it so much harder for so many American families to to succeed. So, you know, I published a book about good news clubs and the larger war on public education in 2012. And I discovered that the good news club was just one part of a much larger attack on America as a modern constitutional democracy. So I feel like we've really underestimated the aims of the religious right over time.

0:11:11 Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. And, you back to, two, it's already hard enough without whatever that club is. You know, like I know one of my daughter's little friends, gosh, she's six now, but I think this was when they were, and you know, love these people, but little daughter, mentioned you Jesus to our daughter. And then my daughter has to be like, what, what's Jesus? And we kind of be like, oh, I don't, I know it's, it, it of intentions, it's already a little tricky, let alone with the, you know, this kind of thing that's purposefully setting kids against one another. It's terrible.

0:12:25 Katherine: It's really funny that you mentioned that, because when this came up in our kid's school, I remember feeling like it was almost like being forced to have the sex talk with your kids before you felt they were ready. I'm like, "Oh my gosh, do we have to talk about religious bigotry now? Can't she just exist in this beautiful, like, state of innocence and happiness with her friends?" And look, I don't have a problem with kids talking with their friends about religion, but I do have a, a problem. Or even inviting, you know, their friends to church. I mean, our daughter's best friend invited her to her church. And I was like, "Yeah, of course she can go, as long as I can go." And we went. It was really interesting. You know, I don't have a problem with that. But what I do have a problems with is kids being deceived into thinking that their public school endorses a very particular form of religion.

0:12:35 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:13:13 Katherine: And then using, yeah.

0:13:13 Thomas: They do not know the difference. Yeah like

0:13:14 Katherine: I'm using that misperception option to bully their kids, to target other kids for bullying and bigotry.

0:13:15 Thomas: That age. Absolutely. So, so that was your first book on, on the topic and, uh, how was that received? You know, how do you think

0:13:26 Katherine: It was great. I mean, it was well -received. It's interesting because I think, again, a lot of people are like, what are you talking about? Obama's the president. But the book was really well -reviewed. It is very thoroughly researched and reported. Was clear that as I was writing this book that we really misunderstood the extent to which this movement is committed to undermining the democratic process itself. I mean, we work with the idea sometimes that the religion comes first and that the politics follows. But the truth is, it's frankly more the other way around. I know, we often, I would think that, they've got these religious views and therefore they're going to these adopt political viewpoints. But if you really dig into to it, you see that this is a movement that's really less about theology than it is about politics and power. So there are a lot of, say, policy positions that are really embraced specifically order to consolidate that kind of power.

0:13:36 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. It's it is so interesting too because I have religious family and it's there is, I think, I feel like I had a lot of those same impulses where it's like, well, you know, I know that they, they have their religious views and that tends to fuel what they're doing, but then you see these, you, organizations, these, these really well organized political elites at the top that's like, okay, well, they, they are very much about politics and not so much just believers or whatever. You know, it's really kind of disturbing in a lot of ways.

0:14:54 Katherine: I mean, the movement disparages the way that most, I would say many, if not most, American Christians understand their faith, which has to do with loving their neighbor and protecting the least of these rather than using their religion to dominate other people and impose their religion on other people.

0:15:08 Thomas: Yeah. Why don't we get one fundamentalist Christian group devoted to the homeless? Can we get a single? Maybe there's some out there, but like, what if, like, imagine. Imagine the machinery, the political dollars all devoted to like, Like, we cannot let a single other human being live on the street. Could you imagine? Would be incredible.

0:15:32 Katherine: It's interesting. There are religious groups that are devoted to helping the homeless.

0:15:35 Thomas: Sure, yeah. They don't have any money.

0:15:37 Katherine: Of them are disparaged as fake Christians. I mean, we think about somebody like Donald Trump and the fact that that he has been embraced as a supposed, you know, leader, right, of this movement. Movement is really more about identity signaling. I mean, when Trump says something like, you see now that he's profiting from the sale of Bibles. I means, that's a masterclass from a grifting insurrectionist demagogue on how to win votes by conflating a fundamentalist religion that, frankly, he doesn't believe in with a constitution that he has attempted to undermine. I mean, you

0:15:55 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mean, I the book has two Corinthians in it, so it's got to be. Are you telling me he's not a true?

0:16:21 Katherine: Well, it's really about signaling identity. I think for religious nationalism of any kind, it is more about belonging. It is a kind of idea of who gets to properly belong in the nation and who doesn't. And the American context, it's like if you don't have the right religion or at least pay lip service to the right religion and have the Right Political Viewpoints, you're not a true American.

0:16:29 Thomas: Yeah.

0:16:47 Thomas: It's too bad. It's too bad that they don't actually believe in a lot of the ideals that, you know, you could pick and choose the good ones, it seems like, but yeah, they never do. What's What'S the story leading to your book, The Power Worshippers, which has now gone on to become this film, God and Country, that I know so many of us have seen? Seen.

0:17:03 Katherine: You so much for asking. Well, you know, after the Good News came out, I just kept writing and researching on the topic. And at a certain point, I realized, wow, you know, there needs to be another book here. You know, on public education, which is really the topic of the Good Good News Club was really just much one part of a much larger war on American democracy. So I started, you pulling together material for that book. And it came out in the same came out March 2020, the same week that our school schools were shuttered, which was interesting.

0:17:35 Thomas: Oh, wow. You seem to go for election years. That's probably smart.

0:17:40 Katherine: But still got, you know, a fair amount of attention. I think people were starting to really grasp the fact that religious nationalism was really going to be a problem in our our country. I mean, I think the election of Donald Trump in 2016 persuaded a lot of people. People could, like, I mean certain things happened. You had the election of Donald Donald Trump, the sort of appointment of all the sort of far -right justices. You had January 6th happened, the overturning of Roe versus Wade, the appointment of Mike Johnson. I think now people are really aware of what happens. And I think people are also is starting to grasp the idea that Christian nationalism is not a religion. It's not Christianity. It is both an ideology, an anti -democratic ideology that says America's founded to be a Christian nation. Our laws should be based on the Bible. But it's also a leadership driven and organization driven political movement that's really about power.

So the movement, which Which, you know, somebody once described power worshipers as, you know, they're like, if the Christian nationalist movement is a watch, this book takes the back off the watch so you can see the machinery. When I say it's organization driven, you can group a lot of those organizations into categories. There are right-wing policy groups, legal advocacy groups, pastoral organizations that give pastors, you draw them into networks and give them tools to get their congregations to vote a certain way.

There are a lot of networking organizations, legislative initiatives, etc. unites the movement is less any particular sort of theological points, but more of a common political vision. I think we can think of it in this way in countries like Iran, okay, or Russia or Turkey, when leaders in those countries ally themselves with hyper conservative religious leaders to consolidate a more authoritarian form of political power. We rightly recognize that as a form of religious nationalism.

They're using religion to divide their own populations into those who belong and those who don't, supposedly. And they do it to be more authoritarian or dictatorial in the way they government and basically to protect themselves, you know, they're bubble wrapping themselves in sanctimony to off any investigation into their own corruption.

0:18:13 Thomas: Yeah.

0:19:58 Thomas: Oh my gosh. Also, honestly, not the topic today, but of it reminds Netanyahu a bit too. I mean, once he had a lot of corruption scandals, it seemed like he had to ally with the far right in Israel as well. And, but but we can leave that.

0:20:08 Katherine: Exactly. And that has divided the country. I mean, even before October 7th and And

0:20:11 Thomas: Yeah. And on a, on level too, I've noticed within a lot of, um, minor kind of online communities. I've noticed that the minute usually a man is accused of something or, or it comes out that like, oh, this person might be kind of shitty. All of a sudden there's like a bit of a rightward turn. I feel like people know that if they go fash, if they go to that direction, there there's is like this instant acceptance as long as you glom on to their us versus them kind of thing. They're not, they're going to look the other way on some of the, maybe the scandal or the something. It's weird how it It seems like it operates high and low, you know, like at all stages of that.

0:20:49 Katherine: Know, I think, and the religion can really help with that. It's like these sort of corrupt people say, say, look, I'm surrounded by holy men, so you can't criticize me. I mean, when you look at Donald Trump's rallies, he's got Robert Jeffress to his left and Mark Burns to his right. These two sort of preachers who often as warm -up acts for him in his rallies. He often surrounds himself with religious figures in say, Look at me. You can't touch me. Because I think They're exploiting this idea that most people associate religion with goodness.

0:20:53 Thomas: Yeah.

0:21:22 Thomas: Yeah. Can we stop doing that? I feel like it's not, I'm not saying all religious people are bad, but holy shit. Like, especially at the top, there's no guarantee that they're good. I'll tell you that. Like, I wish as a country, we would kind of get over that impulse.

0:21:36 Katherine: It's interesting. I think it's helpful when we're looking at this movement and trying to understand it to distinguish between the leaders and the followers. The rank and file, your average voter who's lending their support to this movement, they might believe that they're fighting for things like traditional marriage or a ban on abortion. But over time, the movement leaders and strategists have basically shaped and reframed these culture war issues in order to capture and control the votes of a very large subsection of the American public. They know if you can get people to vote on a single issue or a few issues, you can control their vote.

So they use these issues to sort of solidify and maintain political power for themselves and their allies. And they're also, it's not just about power, it is always about money. It's like, follow the money, as Wayne told me. So they want to increase the flow of public and private money in their direction. And they are enacting economic policies that are actually favorable to some of the richest funders.

I mean, the movement would be nowhere without an extremely well-funded, I mean extremely rich group, frankly, of people who want far-right economic positions along with certain positions in the culture wars. So, like, if you want to have fun one day, just Google Betsy DeVos's yachts. I mean, she's, you know, she and her family, I call the Prince

0:21:45 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:23:01 Katherine: De Vos juggernaut. They have been deeply involved in this movement in various ways for years. They've been huge funders of the Republican Party and also different initiatives connected with this movement. But I mean their wealth is extraordinary. Extraordinary, um, they are endorsing politicians whose policies are going to increase that economic disparities, and we're really living in a new Gilded Age where life is just getting harder for people in the bottom, you know, say like the bottom 90 percent. It's like, so how is that standing for family values if you're trying to erode the rights of the workforce, break unions, um, away American health care. You're trying to destroy neighborhood schools, you

0:23:46 Thomas: Do you need more than one yacht for? I'm borderline on one yacht, but like, okay, I'll spot you one yacht.

0:23:52 Katherine: Know, honey, I'd like a yacht, but maybe a small one.

0:23:53 Thomas: Yeah. What do You need your second yacht for

0:23:55 Katherine: I don't know.

0:23:55 Thomas: Is like the different Oceans, like, one, I got a Pacific yacht, an Atlantic yacht, you know, I gotta, that's, that's all, that's crazy, that level of wealth, yeah. Have started to look, and I don't know if this is like too cynical, but I've started to looking at the right as largely a collection of ways to distract people into voting for rich people stuff, like, just, it, and it feels like, as much as there is going on, does it, does it really ultimately simplify on some level to just that? Yeah.

0:24:03 Katherine: Yeah, I think that we cannot the role of disinformation and conspiracism in this movement. I mean, this is a movement that's really good at taking people, often in religious congregations, and keeping them in an information silo where the information they get comes from religious authorities or a narrow group of news sources, and they've successfully filtered out other influences. You know, the way I do a lot of my research is you can't know what's happening unless you're in the room. So I Go to these right-wing conferences and strategy gatherings and pastoral gatherings. And I went to one in Chantilly, Virginia a few years ago as an initiative where they're gathering pastors into this network, and they're giving them information supposedly to help them get out their congregation to vote for right -wind candidates. And this, January 6th, but it was after the investigation into supposed allegations in Arizona and voting. Do you remember the Cyber Ninjas? It was a Republican -led group in Arizona that alleged there were voting irregularities, and they ran the investigation. And these Republicans, who called themselves Cyber Ninjs, they came up with nothing. They're like, well, gosh, sorry, we got nothing.

0:24:57 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:25:45 Thomas: It was kind of a surprise. I thought they would do up with something, it actually. Yeah.

0:25:51 Katherine: Thought they would, but they were actually, you know, doing a true investigation. They came up with nothing. But So the speaker at this gathering, he's telling all these pastors, "You saw what happened in Arizona, didn't you?" He was sort of like implying that something untoward had happened in Arizona. Well, in fact, nothing untoward had happened. So he was there to spread lies about the election, election spread election disinformation, he was saying, "Oh, they had dead people voting," and there are all these election, and "you saw what happened in Arizona," and I'm like, everything you're citing has been debunked, so what is this really about? But it's really about keeping people in an information silo so that they're impervious to the facts. And And that makes them easier to control.

0:25:55 Thomas: Yep.

0:26:35 Thomas: Yeah, um, you want to talk about, uh, the process of it getting into made into a movie, or what, what do you think it's really interesting

0:26:42 Katherine: Yeah, I'd love to. Well, so in 2020, I signed with Anonymous Content. It's a content development company where they take books and, you out, you could this be turned into a movie project? And someone who's connected with that organization sent the book to Michelle Reiner and Rob Reiner. And

0:26:43 Thomas: Yeah It's funny, I heard Rob reyer this promote on it, on, I think it might have been Love It or Leave It, it was like a few months back. And it just seemed like an interesting, you know, an interesting pairing. Is that something that, where did that interest come from? Or has it always been there? And I just only know him from, you know, Princess Bride or something.

0:27:18 Katherine: That he and his wife, Michelle, have been involved in, you politics in different ways and different, you know, he's a very sort of switched on, they're a very switched on couple. They, really you care about our democracy and our constitutional principles and our freedoms. I then ended up, you them through Warner Brothers. Signed the deal with Warner Brothers. And then it sort of took off from there. I feel really honored to have written the book upon which that film was based. They selected Dan Partland, a director who'd done really interesting work, including a film called Unfit about Trump himself. And I think he's working on a sequel to that. And, he, you full credit for the choices that he made in bringing the project to film. I that it's always interesting when a book gets turned into a film, because books and films are different ways of telling stories.

0:27:23 Thomas: Yeah. Oh,

0:28:14 Katherine: And, you know, I think, you know, felt really moved by the fact that there are so many American Christians who see this religious nationalism as not just a threat to our democracy, but also a sort of threat to their faith. But he brought in a really diverse range of voices. He brought in, um, of folks who are now working at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, like Rob Boston and Andrew Seidel. He bought in the writer, Kirsten Kobes-Jumay, who wrote Jesus John Wayne. She's written a lot about sort of Christian patriarchy movement.

0:28:54 Thomas: Wow. Jesus and John Wayne. That's an interesting one. I might have to check that out.

0:28:56 Katherine: He in Doug Padgett, who has an called Vote Common Good. A faith -based organization, a Christian leader. Reverend Barber, he brought in people like Russell Moore and David French who come from a more conservative side, but still understand that Christian nationalism represents a threat, not just to our democracy, but to their understanding of the faith as well. So he just brought in a really diverse range of voices. And I think, think, you know, it's really proud to have been part of this film. Well, I

0:29:29 Thomas: Yeah, that is so cool. So does it feel like it, departed you somewhat from source in a way? Or is it like just taking kind of of a different way of telling the story in your mind.

0:29:38 Katherine: Mean, I think a different way of telling a film is always going to take a different way of talking the story. You know, the my book, The Power Worshippers tells a lot of different stories that has a lot characters in it. You know. I sort of do a lot on the ground reporting and I also pull back in times and do political and historical analysis.

0:29:42 Thomas: Sure. Yeah.

0:29:59 Thomas: I'm Yeah, sure, Sure, they blended characters, they probably killed off a character that you didn't want to, I'M SURE THERE WAS ALL KINDS. No, I' m just kidding.

0:30:05 Katherine: I don't think anyone is killed off in this film, but yeah, yeah, it really was.

0:30:08 Thomas: It probably doesn't work that way. But what a what a cool experience. And it's and it's so well received. There things that you maybe And I don't mean this in like a negative way, but are the things that you wish were in it that weren't or points or stories or characters that maybe you could tell, my audience about that didn't make it to the, to the movie?

0:30:27 Katherine: I think if you're interested in seeing what made it and what didn't, you should watch the film and you should also read The Power Worshippers because, in The Power Worshipers, I really talk a lot about the fact organizational infrastructure, which is very interesting. I focus on some really interesting, I think, characters, data initiatives. I talk About, there's a whole chapter about public education, a chapter about about healthcare. So it's, I think, frankly, I'm going to toot my own horn for bed. It's a rich book and there's a lot to find out.

0:30:32 Thomas: Oh, of course.

0:30:56 Thomas: Oh, absolutely. No, full, full links and plugs. Yeah, I was

0:31:00 Katherine: I'm working on a new book. I've got a new book coming out on the same topic or a similar related topic, very closely related.

0:31:05 Thomas: Really? Well, there is an election coming up, so there you go. There's election in your books, I'm telling you.

0:31:08 Katherine: Yeah it's so it's coming out in January 2025, also with Bloomsbury, which is my publishing house for the Power Worshippers. So we're still settling on a title, but you can look for that if you're interested. I'll at some point start publicizing that on my, probably my Twitter feed, which is Kath S. Stewart with two S's. I still call it Twitter. I can't help myself.

0:31:32 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:31:33 Katherine: You

0:31:33 Thomas: I happened to the uh, Good News Clubs though, is that something, because that wasn't even that long ago, and it was in California, and I like, the the rest of the story took off, and it's, and uh, hard to not just go along with with all that, which is really interesting, but what happened, have you ever revisited that? You know, I imagine, imagine kids are different ages, kind of priorities shift or something, but that is just wild to me that that in that year, in that place, in a public school, it was that big of a problem. Did anything, you know, has anything changed with that, do you think?

0:32:06 Katherine: Know, there are more Good News Clubs in public elementary schools today than there were, according to the organization, than there was when I published the Good News Club. I think when I released the Good New Club, there were something like 2 ,100, more or less, Good News clubs in public schools nationwide. And the latest figure I saw was something like 6 ,700. So, listen, but the war on public education has really shifted, not just to forcing their programs into public schools, but also to destroying faith in public schools in order

0:32:09 Thomas: That's Bad news.

0:32:46 Thomas: Yeah.

0:32:46 Katherine: To Prepare the ground for defunding public education wholesale through not just vouchers, which siphon money from the public school system and divert it, in many instances, to faith-based schools or schools that are teaching sort of far-right economic ideology, you know, private schools that that are doing that. But also, been a massive growth in, I would say, charter schools that are run by people with right-wing religious and political viewpoints. Now, to be clear, I'm not full-scale anti-charter.

I think there are some terrific charter networks out there that are transparent and that do a great job of offering kind of education options. You know, not every school is right for every kid. But when I was researching the Power Worshippers, I looked into the top 20 charter networks. And eight of them were run by people with either right-wing economic and or conservative agendas.

Although two of them actually were run by Gulen, which is a kind of Turkish-run organization that Erdogan is, is very much in opposition to, and they run these sort of Gulen schools. And I was like, oh my gosh, like, it's just so interesting that people who are acquisitive and want to take money out of the American education system and sort of devote it to bolstering their presence and their, you know, infrastructure can do it via charter networks works. It just seemed like

0:32:46 Thomas: Yeah.

0:34:21 Katherine: A recipe for corruption. And I say this not being anti -charter. I mean, I think there are some great charters out there, but there are so many that are totally, it's like you might as well have a, you know, state -funded faith school or right-wing, ideologically right - wing school.

0:34:21 Thomas: It's Really Sad. Oh.

0:34:38 Thomas: Said, I think that we're in trouble in terms of public education, because it just hard to, because the plan, the game plan that it seems like conservatives have so often is break it and then complain about it not working, you Know, and That comes To Government And It comes to school. Yeah, go ahead, yeah.

0:34:51 Katherine: Well, that's it. You know, starve the beast and in to bring it to, you you know, to, to Jesus or whatever. That's it. They want to, you Know all of this sort of nonsense about, you know, book banning and the fake CRT scandal. Let's be clear, CRT is not taught in any public schools. It's something that was limited to a law schools. It They're basically using the term CRT to mean anything they they don't like. So teaching about America's history of slavery and its consequences or teaching mean basically that's what it is, you know, um.

0:35:00 Thomas: Yeah.

0:35:26 Thomas: Well, I mean, they've got a new buzzword now, now they're on to DEI, so we'll Try. I'm Sure By the time your book comes up, they'll be your new book, there'll be another one, I'm sur, they'll b-, they're always shifting to another term.

0:35:29 Katherine: It's DEI There's And So you know, you hear the stuff they're saying about public schools, and like, we sent our kids to three different, you, public schools because we moved about, we also actually sent them to a faith school at one point, and also homeschooled one of our kids for a couple of years, so we've kind of done a lot of different things with our kids and education, like the stuff you're saying about public schools, I'm like, what are they talking about? My kids are learning like math and like the names of state capitals.

0:35:36 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:36:01 Katherine: You know what I mean? I mean, I think frankly, most Americans send their kids to public schools like them and value the idea of a strong public school, strong neighborhood school system.

0:36:14 Katherine: I just think about all The money that's been devoted to this, like choice initiatives, initiatives, you just so much money, and I just think, wow, we could have really done a lot for the public schools that are struggling.

0:36:14 Thomas: I Hope So Yeah. Yep.

0:36:27 Thomas: Public schools need another yacht instead of Betsy DeVos, you know, it's really sad, because and it's also like it becomes a thing where It's hard to blame people, because once they effectively break it, you know, in a given place, or in a get, or just in general dragging the system down, it's really hard to tell people, even, you know, liberal, who people are not particularly in love with Christianity or anything, telling them like, yeah, but we need to still support this system. And they're like, well, okay, but I can't send my kids to this particular school, I'm going to send them to this charter school. And it sucks because it's hard to blame anyone. But once the system, you knows, starts down that path, I don't know how we recover it, because

0:36:34 Katherine: Well,

0:37:06 Thomas: Just is so hard. Go ahead.

0:37:06 Katherine: You Know the Great thing, I have to say, like, there's so much, uh, cause for hope now, there's so many, we're in such, such a different place than we were, um, a democracy, you know, 15 years ago, when people were like, well, the religious right really isn't a factor, etc. I think there's understand that you is organizing. And people who are sort of support our constitutional principles and support our freedoms and equality are also organizing.

And we really need a big tent, including people who are conservative, like true conservatives, to people who were on the left, you, this quote from Ronald Reagan, okay, many years ago, where he said something, I'm going to sort of paraphrase here, he said, that's something like the person who is your, agrees with you 80% of the time, is that's not your 20% enemy, that's your 80% friend.

And I think that we really need to operate under those, understanding that we're not going to agree, we're big, noisy American democracy, we're not all going to be in agreement about everything all of the time. But if we can find more that unites us than divides us, then we can agree on a lot. And a lot more organizing, including in the public education space, than there has been in a long time. You know, that group Moms for Liberty that was

0:38:25 Thomas: Yeah.

0:38:25 Katherine: Like, you a lot of these just lovely public school volunteers like fearing for their lives. I can't even tell you the number of people who volunteered to work on their school boards, you know, just moms kind of hoping to improve education for their kids. And all of a sudden they're getting death threats. That group, Moms for Liberty, which was, by the way, supported by groups like Heritage Foundation and Bradley Foundation and Leadership Institute, they fell apart. Remember when they made the anti -gay thing a centerpiece of their activity? And then this couple that was like at the cent, like one of their co-founders was involved in like three-way affairs with her, it was like, don't say three-way, remember they had this sort of don't say gay thing, and now it became don't Say Three Way, and their husband was accused of like raping one of the women that they'd been with.

I mean, oh my goodness, what a scandal. But as a consequence of that, not just the scandal, but their activity, there have been groups like, oh, I mean, there's a a whole bunch of new public education -focused groups defending public schools. There's a group called Red Wine and Blue, and there's so many others. I think that the important thing now is to find an organization that, you know, there are things we can do as individuals. There are things we only do when we join together with others. So it's important to

0:38:34 Thomas: Yeah.

0:38:56 Thomas: Didn't do well in the elections. Yeah, a throuple or something? Yeah. Oh my gosh.

0:39:48 Thomas: Yeah

0:39:48 Katherine: Vote, you know, bring your friends out to vote. Help people understand what's at stake in the election. Direction, help people register, you know, don't assume that everybody knows how to register to vote or their vote counts, but also to find organizations, like find one that really chimes with values and with what you want to see for our country and get involved.

0:39:48 Thomas: Absolutely.

0:40:09 Thomas: That's a great place to leave it. Katherine Stewart, the book is The Power Worshippers. Of course, the film is God and Country. You pointed people to your ex, to your Twitter. Is there anything else you want to point people to?

0:40:21 Katherine: Have to say, thank you so much for having me. I am going to have a new book come out. Know, the last book came out in 2020. This one will come out in early 2025. 25. So look for it. And, thank you so much for listening and thanks for the conversation. Yeah.

0:40:35 Thomas: Absolutely. We'd be pleased to have you back. Yeah.

0:40:38 Katherine: Really good to chat.

0:40:39 Thomas: Take care.

0:40:39 Katherine: You You too.