Last spring, we talked with historian Matthew Sutton on the show about the apocalyptic politics of the American evangelical right.

Today, we’ve invited him back to discuss his latest article in the New Republic, “The Capitol Riot Revealed the Darkest Nightmares of White Evangelical America” and do a deep dive into the recent history of white evangelicalism and its host of seeming contradictions, how “evangelical” has evolved to be more of a political identity than a religious one, and what we might see from this group in the future now that Trump is out of office.

Matthew A. Sutton is a history professor at Washington State University, where he teaches courses in 20th century United States history, cultural history, and religious history. He is the author of several books, including American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism (Belknap Press, 2014) and, most recently, Double Crossed: The Missionaries Who Spied for the United States During the Second World War (Basic Books, 2019).