Episode 74: Sowing a Wicked Garden
Guest: Beau Underwood - Minister and Author of Baptizing America: How Mainline Protestants Helped Build Christian Nationalism
Full show notes at https://hoosleft.us/
Find David at… htts://publicwitness.wordandway.org
…and his book at https://chalicepress.com/products/baptizing-america
…and his church at https://www.allisonville.org/
Welcome to the HoosLeft Podcast, a show about Indiana politics, history, and culture from the unapologetic perspective of the social democratic left. My name is Scott Aaron Rogers, and I’m recording from Bloomington.
I’ve spent a great deal of time talking about Christian nationalism in writing and here on the podcast. Last year, I ran a series on American religious fundamentalist extremism, which kicked off close to home with IU-Indianapolis professor Andrew Whitehead giving us the introductory course. From there, we looked deeper into the Independent Charismatic movement with Dr. Matthew Taylor - this is the tradition that Hoosiers can credit (or blame) for anointing Trump as God’s divine instrument, defunding IU’s Kinsey Institute because they think it’s literally a demonic portal, and birthing our idiot Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith. Finally, Dr. Karen Park told us about the Catholic strain of Christian nationalism - think Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, Vice President JD Vance, the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo, and the US Supreme Court he engineered to overturn Roe v. Wade. Those were incredibly informative conversations - and I encourage you to check them out if you haven’t before- but you don’t need to have listened to those episodes to understand this one.
In that series, we heard about Southern Baptists, Pentecostals, and radical Traditionalist Catholics - but we didn’t hear anything about Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, or the other “mainline” Protestant denominations. Why is that? Do these groups reject Christian nationalism? Have they always?
My guest today argues the poison fruit being harvested now, having been carefully tended by the Religious Right for the last 50 years, may have been inadvertently planted by well-meaning Christians long before. Last year, he and co-author Brian Kaylor released the book, Baptizing America: How Mainline Protestants Helped Build Christian Nationalism, published by Chalice Press. His biography, from their website:
Beau T. Underwood has served as Senior Pastor of Allisonville Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Indianapolis, Indiana since January of 2023. Besides pastoring congregations, he has led the advocacy efforts of faith-based organizations in Washington, DC, helped steer an award-winning journalistic ministry, staffed congressional campaigns, served as a community organizer, and worked as a hospital chaplain.
A proud alum of Eureka College, the University of Chicago Divinity School, and the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy, he is currently a doctoral candidate in the University of Missouri's Truman School of Government and Public Affairs.
Along with an abiding interest in how religion intersects with public life, he is passionate about the work of Christian formation that engages both the minds and hearts of those seeking to follow Jesus. His writing has appeared in Sojourners, The Christian Century, Religion & Politics, and Word&Way (where he is a contributing editor).
In this conversation, we’ll dive into some of the ways mainline Protestants paved the way for extreme Christian nationalism, the dangers of building parallel cultures, and how some churches are confronting their complicity. We’ll talk about rooting for the end of the world, how fundamentalists and scandal have tarnished the church’s brand, and overcoming that baggage when building a congregation.
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Now, here is my conversation with Beau Underwood.
Cited in the Interview
“The Blueprint for Christian Nationalism”: https://kettering.org/project-2025-the-blueprint-for-christian-nationalist-regime-change/
Trump’s Task-Force on “Anti-Christian Bias”: https://apnews.com/article/eradicating-anti-christian-bias-trump-religious-freedom-c4a01b2d75b471e7329f84a6e662c934
Federal Cuts Hitting Catholic Charities… https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/262307/catholic-charities-agencies-across-country-cut-funding-lay-off-staff-amid-funding-freeze
…and Lutheran Social Services: https://lutheranservices.org/news_room/statement-on-disruptions-related-to-the-federal-funding-freeze-on-behalf-of-lutheran-social-ministries/
Fake Historian David Barton: https://www.texastribune.org/2022/07/29/texas-church-state-separation-opposition/
Christianity Today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_Today
Changing Religious Demographics in America: https://www.prri.org/research/religious-change-in-america/
Mainline Protestantism & the Seven Sisters: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/know-mainline-protestantism/
David Hollinger: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/qa-david-hollinger-religous-right/
George Docherty “Under God”: https://www.swtimes.com/story/lifestyle/faith/2018/06/16/here-s-sermon-that-got/11959294007/
Godless Communism vs. God-Fearing America: https://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2024/5/19/this-godless-communism-cold-war-as-religious-ideological-struggle
Christian Parallel Culture: https://www.npr.org/2011/10/20/141557124/evangelical-christians-form-parallel-structure
The Left Behind Series: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Left-Behind-book-series-by-Lahaye-and-Jenkins
A Christian Criticism of the Left Behind Series: https://baptistnews.com/article/whats-wrong-with-left-behind/
LaHaye’s fear of “power” replacing “truth” is not a direct quote, but the theme of 2001’s Mind Siege: The Battle for Truth in the New Millennium: https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Siege-Battle-Truth-Millennium/dp/0849916720
Christian Nationalists Worship Power: https://andrewwhitehead.substack.com/p/christians-will-have-power-and-other
Bob Edgar, Middle Church: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Middle-Church/Bob-Edgar/9780743289504
Political Sorting in American Churches: https://research.lifeway.com/2022/11/01/churchgoers-increasingly-prefer-a-congregation-that-shares-their-politics/
Recent Spate of Mainline Church Schisms: https://religionnews.com/2025/03/17/protestant-denominations-try-new-ideas-as-they-face-declines-in-members-and-money/
Myth of America as “God’s New Israel”: https://erenow.org/common/american-myths-legends-tall-tales-3-volumes-encyclopedia-american-folklore/12.php
Obama’s “Red Line” on Syria: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-president-blinked-why-obama-changed-course-on-the-red-line-in-syria/
The Antisemitism of Christian Zionists: https://jacobin.com/2022/02/israeli-us-evangelical-alliance-zionism-antisemitism
Bishop Mariann Budde Faces Backlash: https://www.npr.org/2025/01/22/nx-s1-5270918/bishop-mariann-edgar-budde-trump-interview
Vance Catches Theological Smackdown From Pope: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/pope-vance-wrong-migrants-letter.html
Rev. Dr. William Barber II: https://breachrepairers.org/about-us/our-founder/
Jim Wallis: https://www.jimwallis.org/
Once again, that was Beau Underwood, Senior Pastor at Allisonville Christian Church and co-author of the book, Baptizing America: How Mainline Protestants Helped Build Christian Nationalism.
You know, for a non-believer, I spend a lot of time thinking about religion. And listen, I minored in religious studies at IU - I enjoy learning about different faith traditions and belief systems and how each handles various aspects of the human condition. But. with radical fundamentalists, Christian nationalists, and white supremacists hiding behind the cross increasingly gaining positions of prominence in government - and their dogma gradually becoming codified in law - this is no longer an exercise in spiritual exploration or intellectual curiosity, but in decoding the enemy’s war plans - I didn’t get invited to the group chat where they spelled ‘em all out.
I’ve always found it ironic that those who would thrust their religious doctrine on others, who most conspicuously wear the cross, “who love to pray standing in the temples and on the street corners to be seen by others” (Matthew 6:5), who claim to be the MOST Christian, appear to heed the message of the Gospels the least. To borrow from 1980’s Wendy’s commercials, “where’s the Jesus?”
You see plenty of the angry, vengeful God from the Old Testament in the words and deeds of the Christian nationalist set. And you get all of that apocalyptic fire and brimstone from the book of Revelations. The Charismatic Pentecostals find their inspiration in apostles and prophets from the generations immediately after Christ.
What about loving thy neighbor, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, taking care of the least among us? This is what Christ taught, so I don’t know how American right-wingers arrived at the aggressive, hyper-masculine, warrior figure described by Kristin du Mez in her book, Jesus and John Wayne. Hell, if God’s only begotten son were to appear on Earth tomorrow, speaking the same of words of love, compassion, and acceptance he spoke 2,000 years ago, Christian nationalists would call him a cuck, throw a bag over his head, and stick him on the next plane to a Salvadoran prison.
Of the Christian branches we’ve discussed on this podcast (and I know that leaves out a lot), it seems only the mainline denominations reflect the teachings of Jesus. Still, though their hearts were in the right place, as Underwood and his co-author explain, they - in their flawed, fallible, imperfect way - messed up by sowing the seeds of what would eventually blossom into this religious nationalist extremism we see now pervading all facets of public life. And their congregations lost parishioners in droves to boot. Oops. Well to err is fully human. Stick a pin📌 in that for a second.
According to Christian theology, Jesus was fully God on Earth. As such, he was possessed with divine grace, kindness, charity, patience, empathy, wisdom, and on and on - every positive quality one could imagine. And millions of good, well-meaning American Christians spent decades trying to embody these qualities - volunteering, donating, doing good work in their communities. What would Jesus do, right? Yet, so many still succumbed to the sin of pride - overconfidence that their way of being an American was the only way - because everybody sins.
Except Jesus. Jesus didn’t sin, but he did feel the whole range of human emotions, because (and gimme that pin📌 back) he was also fully human. And those emotions included anger. Frequently. At death and disease (John 11:35). At self-righteous hypocrites (Matthew 23:25-32). At the difference between what is legal and what is right (Matthew 12:10, Luke 13:10-17, Luke 6:7, John 9:16). At the dismissal of the next generation (Mark 10:13-16, Matthew 19:13-14). At the exploitation of faith for wealth and power (John 2:13-17, Matthew 21:12-17).
Some things never change. Millennia later, the wealthy and powerful are still at it - the same things that raised Christ’s ire vex us to this day. So what are his well-meaning adherents to do? Now, a particularly famous preacher named Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. - you may have heard of him - said, “darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” If you agree with that sentiment, if you think only knowledge and goodness can defeat ignorance and evil, if you believe only the true Word of God can drive out the false religion of Christian nationalism, what would Jesus do?
Turn the other cheek? I mean, the meek shall inherit the earth, but men in thrall to evil are burning through that inheritance right now. The Lamb of God could roar like a lion, and on occasion, did. Fueled by righteous anger, Christ harnessed that energy and punched up. So, good Christians, though it may be uncomfortable, let yourself get mad. Do not let the rage consume you, but let it power you. Disobey unjust laws. Flip some tables. Get in good trouble. It’s what Jesus would do.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments. Or holler at me on social media - on Facebook, Bluesky, YouTube and TikTok at hoosleft and on most other social media sites at scottrog78. You can also email me at scott@hoosleft.us.
Thanks to my guest, Beau Underwood. Again, the book is Baptizing America: How Mainline Protestants Helped Build Christian Nationalism, available from Chalice Press. You can also find him in writing at Word and Way magazine and their Substack newsletter, A Public Witness - and on Sundays at Allisonville Christian Church in Indianapolis. Links to all those in the show notes. And thank you for listening. One last pitch as I ask you to head over to HoosLeft.US and help support this project with a paid subscription. Hit me up on social media with your feedback, tips, ideas, and concerns. Please forward the show to a friend and have them to forward it to another friend. Let’s keep building this project - and a truly democratic state - one conversation at a time. Until the next one, this has been the HoosLeft podcast. I’m Scott Aaron Rogers. Love each other, Indiana.
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