Trump’s foreign policy has been largely incoherent to experts and politicians, but a certain group of his supporters understand it as ushering forth the end times. That’s the topic of Stephanie Mencimer’s recent piece in Mother Jones, “Evangelicals Love Donald Trump for Many Reasons, But One of Them is Especially Terrifying.”
Today on the show, we learn about the big players in the American evangelical right, what gospel they’re preaching, and the apocalyptic politics that saturate their ideology with Stephanie Mencimer and historian Matthew A. Sutton.
Along the way, they discuss televangelists, the popularity of the Left Behind series, the prosperity gospel, Christian nationalism, and much more.
Stephanie Mencimer is a staff reporter in Mother Jones‘ Washington bureau. She serves as an advisory board member of the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
Matthew A. Sutton is a history professor at Washington State University, where he teaches courses in 20th century United States history, cultural history, and religious history. He is the author of several books, including American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism (Belknap Press, 2014) and, most recently, Double Crossed: The Missionaries Who Spied for the United States During the Second World War (Basic Books, 2019).
Cover image by Enrique Meseguer from Pixabay