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Episode 519: How Reaganism Won the Church & Skye’s New Book


Phil has another "crazy theory," and Skye and Kaitlyn aren't sure what to make of it. What if 1964 is one of the hinge points in American history? 1964, as Phil explains, was the year a Catholic housewife from Illinois and a mid-tier movie star from Hollywood attempted to put an Arizonan libertarian in the White House. Their effort failed, but in the process did they actually plant the seeds that would remake both America and the American church??


Give a listen as Phil spins the story of three unlikely people he believes "made" modern conservatism inside and outside the American church... Barry Goldwater, Phyllis Schlafly and Ronald Reagan. You don't have to agree. Just humor him.


PLUS Kaitlyn interviews Skye about his new book - What if Jesus was Serious About the Church?


Holy Post Patreon: https://patreon.com/holypost


News Segment 0:00 - Intro 2:53 - Background and context for Phil's theory 6:54 - Person 1: Barry Goldwater 12:07 - Person 2: Phyllis Schlafly 20:14 - Person 3: Ronald Reagan 35:35 - Debriefing Phil's theory


Interview with Skye Jethani

"What If Jesus Was Serious About the Church?" - https://amzn.to/3PNlVI6 53:06 - Interview intro 54:45 - Why prescribe something for the church? 57:55 - How we use the word "church" 1:02:38 - Finding a church 1:06:29 - Preacher vs. table 1:17:53 - Authority in the church 1:23:59 - Seeking change within a church community1:30:01 - Credits


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7 Comments


peteski
peteski
Jul 31, 2022

Love this show. Great episode! Could you do a similar history of the perspective we that love this podcast share? Where did our beliefs come from? Somewhere I assume.... 🤔

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bfgaylord
Jul 29, 2022

Great show as usual. Its uncanny how you can take things that I believe and explain them a whole lot better than me. In the 1964 campaign, the commercial with the little girl only aired one time (*Wikipedia) during the TV movie David and Bathsheba. It got a whole lot more attention.


The one thing you didn't cover that's important is the division within the Republican Party itself that went back to at least the end of World War 2. The 1952 primary between Robert Taft (the conservative) and Eisenhower (establishment) showed the division that continues today. Eisenhower and Reagan were able to unite both wings of the party, and that played a big part in their success. Nixon …


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Pam Faggart
Pam Faggart
Jul 28, 2022

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose....

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dab_kazoos0x
Jul 28, 2022

I understand what Phil was trying to communicate with his "he was not a racist" comments about Barry Goldwater. But I think that Randall Balmer's Bad Faith thesis is relevant. It is often misrepresented to be something like, "evangelicals never cared about abortion, they were just racists all along." But that isn't the thesis. The thesis is much more narrow and is roughly, "the rise of the religious right was influenced by IRS investigation into segregation academies as a type of government overreach." That narrower thesis has makes sense of Phil's three types of conservatives. The religious conservatives were concerned about freedom of religion as a concept, even if they were not interested in segregation as a religious concerns. The racial…

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Lisa Crews
Lisa Crews
Jul 27, 2022

We've seen this movie before: Spiritual leadership mixing just enough religion and "God talk" with politics to maintain temporal earthly power by choosing the violent insurrectionist (AKA freedom fighter) rescuing his country from pagan oppression instead of choosing Jesus, the selfless suffering servant who loved His enemies and commanded His followers to do likewise for the sake of His eternal heavenly kingdom: Mark 15: 6-15 6 Now at the feast he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked. 7 And among the rebels in prison, who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barab′bas. 8 And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he was …

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