Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I'm Steve Hayes joined today by John Ward, a senior political reporter with Yahoo News and author of Testowoning,

a raw and deeply personal book about growing up in a fundamentalist evangelical household,

and ending up as a debout Christian in journalism. It's a fascinating story of growing up in a world where doubt and skepticism were discouraged and questioning certain assumptions was forbidden,

even sinful, only to emerge pursuing a career in journalism that puts a premium on asking uncomfortable questions and approaching subjects with the skepticism.

We talked about John's faith and the pressure to conform with church leadership that often didn't practice what they preached.

We discussed painful periods of intense devotion to a kind of non-denominational Christianity where shame, including public self-criticism, was the point we explored

is decision to pursue life in journalism, as years working with Tucker Carlson at the Daily Caller, the blind spots of the mainstream media and enthusiastic embrace of most evangelicals for Donald Trump,

and its implications for our politics, our faith, and our world.

I hope you enjoy the conversation, and when it's done stick around for high stakes, a new mini-series hosted by me and Sarah Isker related to a little bit that we made about the presidential election.

It's a member's only feed, so in order to get access to it you'll have to join the dispatch. If you're already a member you can follow the link in the description and get access to your personal private feed.

If you're not yet a member, please consider joining the dispatch for access, tie stakes, and to all of our work here in our newsletters and on our website.

I really enjoyed it. I read it this weekend while I was traipsing around Notre Dame, very different religious tradition than the one that you describe, and very different from the religious tradition that I was raised in.

I was raised a congregationalist in suburban Milwaukee, and it's not a congregationalist in the sort of northeastern sense that people understand congregationalism.

It was a conservative church I would say culturally and morally, but a pretty liberal church theologically.

I mean, you came from a very different tradition, I will say. Well, let's start at the beginning. The book is called Testimony. What does Testimony mean to Christians broadly, and why is this book your testimony?

Christians is a very broad term. So I'll just say what Testimony means to the Christians that I grew up around, and then if you want to broaden it, we can go from there.

But in the world I grew up in a testimony was often something that someone did in a corporate public setting, often in a church service.

And they would usually stand up or go to the microphone at this on the stage and talk about ways in which they had faced a challenge usually, or hit a low point, something of that nature and how God had helped them or met them through that.

So I think the way that that term replies to me is, you know, most clearly seen in probably the last decade, you know, I'm thinking of how Testimony applies to my entire life, but also to the last decade.

I think if it were, if I were to say how it applies to my entire life, it's kind of my story of growing up in a very intense faith culture.

Feeling pretty early on, like there was something a little off about it, but never really wanting to reject it entirely and I still feel that way.

And leaving that sort of small bubble going out into the bigger world, learning a lot of new skills, learning a lot of new information that I just didn't have growing up, and then trying to incorporate the two.

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