Welcome to The Lost Debata Show for Politically Ecclectics. I'm Ravi Gupta, and today we're welcoming

Tim Alberta, who's a staff writer for The Atlantic and the former chief political correspondent for Politico.

He's written for dozens of other publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, Vanity Fair,

and he's the author of the amazing New York Times bestseller book, American Carnage on the front lines of the Republican Civil War and the rise of President Trump.

He co-moderated the final Democratic presidential debate in 2019.

But the reason why we are welcoming him today is because he wrote this new book called The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, American Evangelism and the Age of Extremism.

It's all about the evangelical church in the United States. Tim, welcome to the podcast.

Ravi, thanks for having me, man. I'm excited to be here. Your book was tremendous, and I think a good

place to start is where you start, which is the date of July 29th, 2019.

Why is that date important?

Yeah, it's the day my dad died.

And I'm a pastor's kid.

I grew up in the evangelical church.

My dad was a pretty amazing guy, fascinating character.

He actually was an atheist who was a hot shot New York

banker into his late 20s and then suddenly had a pretty dramatic conversion experience and was

born again. And not only was born again, but felt called to the ministry. And so he left his

whole life behind, whole world behind, and started

preaching, went to seminary, and then eventually I came along. And so that's the world I grew up

in, in the evangelical church, in a small conservative white Republican town, small conservative

white Republican church. But then it got bigger over the years. And as the

church grew and as I grew, my faith journey was progressing. I actually felt closer and closer to

...