Host Diana Korte spoke with Ex-Evangelical Josiah Hesse this week about his fourth book, “ON FIRE FOR GOD. Fear, Shame, Poverty, and the Making of the Christian Right—A Personal History.”

When asked why he wrote this book, Colorado-based Hesse said “I was tired of hearing my colleagues in journalism express their bafflement as to why working-class evangelicals would support a man like Donald Trump. Evangelicals make up a third of our country, and yet most journalists and editors know nothing about them.”  

“I have yet to encounter any books (about evangelicals) written by someone whose family were desperately poor and susceptible to the con of prosperity gospel or multilevel marketing, who experienced the kinetic rush of a Pentecostal church service, or were taught creationist science in a rural Christian school.”