So-called culture wars are not a modern phenomenon. But, in our modern political landscape wedge issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, trans rights, and Critical Race Theory have become almost central to political discourse, and our guest today says this is very much by design.
Katherine Stewart is an investigative reporter and author whose work focuses on issues around religious liberty, politics, policy, and education. Her work appears in the New York Times op ed, on NBC, in the New Republic, and in the New York Review of Books.
She began focusing on these issues more than a decade ago after the public school her child attended began hosting what are called ‘Good News Clubs’ that work to convert children to fundamentalist Christianity while creating the false impression that their activities are endorsed by the school. That led to her 2009 book “The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children.”
In her latest book, "The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism" Stewart lays out how the Religious Right in the United States has portrayed itself as a social movement focusing on cultural issues, but is actually a well-organized political movement that has evolved into a Christian nationalist movement that seeks to gain political power and to impose its vision on all of society.
