Hi, I'm Melissa Molano. And this is Sorry Not Sorry. So, Evangelical voters have been a key constituency for the GOP for decades, but as that party veers to Trumpism and extremism, often with the words

and actions that fly in the face of their faith, will evangelicals stay with them? This week we are joined by Tim Alberta.

Tim is a staff writer for the Atlantic whose new book The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, American Evangelicals,

in the Age of Extremism, is now available.

Remarkably, after the leak of that videotape of Donald Trump boasting of being able to grab the genitals of any woman he wants because as a star quote,

you can do anything, some of his most stalwart defenders are leaders of the religious right.

Back in 2016, Donald Trump won the election with 77% of a group you might not expect, the white evangelical Protestant vote.

After four years in office, that number grew in 2020, he won 84% of their vote.

I'm to the place right now. If you vote vote Democrat I don't even want you around this church you can get out.

You get out you demon. You get out you baby butchering election thief. It's very difficult to sit here and listen to arguments in

the long history of this country of using scripture and weaponizing and

using scripture to justify bigotry. I am Tim Alberta. I am trying to tell people about Jesus and reclaim my own faith tradition from the

extremes. Sorry I'm not sorry.

Tim, thank you so much for joining us on Sorry Not Sorry. Welcome.

I want to get into the book, but before I do please tell our listeners a bit about you and the work that you do.

Sure, thank you for having me and I'm grateful for the chance to talk with you.

My day job is as a staff writer for the Atlantic magazine. I've spent most of my career in journalism covering politics and elections and Congress in the White House and all of that fun stuff, but really the last three or four years,

I've started to transition a little bit to do more culture, work, religion work, a little bit of sports even when I can convince my editors to go for it.

And this book that I've written on the American Evangelical Church

is the second book that I've done.

My first was about four years ago, which was covering

sort of the collapse of George W Bush's Republican Party and Donald Trump's takeover of the

...