Hey, everyone, it's Reed. Before we get started, I just want to wish everybody a happy and healthy holiday season.

I know these are uncertain times. I know you might have a lot of tough conversations, but just know you can always find what you need here at the Lincoln Project.

Lincoln Project.us. I hope you'll share what we're doing. I hope you'll share this podcast. And again, I hope you enjoy your time with friends and family.

And now, on with the show.

Welcome back to the Lincoln Project.

I'm your host, Reed Galen. Today, I'm joined by John Ward.

John has covered American politics and culture for two decades, as a city desk reporter in Washington, D.C., as a White House correspondent, and as a national affairs correspondent covering two presidential campaigns.

Today, he's an author and senior political correspondent for Yahoo News.

He's also the host of The Long Game podcast and publisher of the Substack Newsletter,

Order Stalkers. His latest book, which came out earlier this year, is testimony, inside the

evangelical movement that failed a generation, and it's available where refined books are sold.

John, welcome. Hey, Reed. Thanks for having me. It's great to see you and talk with you.

No, it's good to see you too. It's been far too long. So let's talk about the book. So it's called

testimony inside the evangelical movement that failed a generation. And one thing I found, John, is that I don't

want to say that you and I were on parallel tracks growing up, but you grew up in suburban

Maryland. I grew up in suburban Virginia. You grew up within the evangelical movement. I grew up,

I guess, until I was 12, anyway, within the Reform Judaism community.

But talk to us a little bit about, you know, your childhood and coming up at that time in that place,

in a place like Washington, D.C., and begin to take us a little bit on the journey that I think

you're still on, but you really start to get into in your book.

I grew up in a very fundamentalist environment, and by fundamentalist, you know, some people have said,

well, that's a very specific theological movement within Christianity, which it is.

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