G'day, humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. Here's a doozy for you.

Is the United States of America a Christian nation? Was it founded as a Christian nation?

And should it someday become a truly Christian nation?

That is a question that in recent decades has gone from being on the periphery of the

national American conversation, limited to a few lunatics on the far Christian right,

to a mainstream way of thinking on the American right.

They may not call themselves Christian nationalists,

which sounds a bit pejorative, but that is basically what they are, and they comprise a significant

minority of Americans today. One of the most influential people in mainstreaming this idea was

none other than Charlie Kirk, who I've learned a lot more about since his assassination. And whilst I'm inclined to

respect Charlie for the fact that he did politics the right way insofar as he used language

and conversations and trying to convince people that he was right rather than violence and

whining and lobbying and campaigning, nonetheless, what he was actually pushing for was a vision of America that is completely

antithetical to liberal ideals and is infused with a level of Christianity that many

secular Americans would find discomforting.

Into this fray enters today's guest.

Dr. Matthew Bodie, he is an assistant professor at the University of North Georgia,

but he used to be a

journalist. And in his academic work, he focuses on the rhetoric of religion and specifically how

religious people talk about evil and how this kind of mythology has emerged on the American

right, that the entirety of America, all of its institutions from the government to entertainment,

to media, to the courts, to family, to business have been co-opted essentially by demonic,

...